User Reviews

"Paris Calling" is a strange and somewhat unusual wartime movie. It tries to pack a number of plots into one film. It has a French traitor, the French underground organizing, a love triangle, the fall of Paris and rise of Vichy France, a grounded American RAF pilot, a German flyer who balks at bombing civilians fleeing Paris, a NAZI SS operation hunting the underground, and a British rescue raid. Whew! It takes a lot just to keep caught up in this film. As one might imagine, it's very choppy and bounces all over the place.

I give it five stars because it forgot one thing – a concentration camp (tongue-in-cheek). Realistically, the plot tries to tackle way too much, and the screenplay can't hold all the sections together to make it halfway believable. At least one other reviewer wondered if this wasn't a comedy. While it likely wasn't intended as such, there are parts that are so far out that they are funny. By far the zaniest make-believe attempt is at the end. A lone pontoon plane takes off on a rescue mission. It doesn't encounter any aerial resistance or flak and lands in the harbor of Bordeaux. It looks like two squads of British troops get out of the plane and in short order they have knocked out a German force that has surrounded and occupies a café where all the various good guys are being arrested by the Gestapo.

The movie concludes with all of those troops, and the American RAF pilot, and the heroine, and half a dozen French underground people from the café all boarding that one pontoon boat in the harbor and taking off to freedom in England. It's a hilarious scene just because it's so outlandish.

Most of the roles in this film are OK. Elisabeth Bergner is Marianne Jannetier in one of her few Hollywood films. She was a very attractive British actress who didn't fare very well on the other side of the pond. As shy a character as she is here – a refined woman and concert pianist, it's a real stretch to believe that she could shoot and kill her fiancé. Basil Rathbone is that cad, Andre Benoit, who's willing to sell out his France to have a position of power in the new Nazi order.

One part of the film that some may think added to humor is the role Lee J. Cobb plays. He is Captain Schwabe, a Gestapo honcho who's out to crack the French underground. His dialog and manner are hilarious at times. When he goes into Colette's Café, the known place where somehow the underground is transmitting radio messages to England, he sits at a table with another SS officer. He looks around the place and says to his comrade, "The girls don't smile, the air is bad, the music is impossible, but I like this place." Gale Sondergaard plays Colette, whose Bordeaux waterfront café is the front for the French underground. It seems to be known by everyone as such, in spite of the underground chief's regimen for secrecy. Paul Leyssac plays his character to the hilt. Randolph Scott is Lt. Nick Jordan, an American pilot in the RAF. Jordan wasn't shot down over France, but was left behind with his co-pilot as they were asleep and his unit suddenly pulled out as the Germans were advancing. As I said, there is much in this movie that is hokey.

Jordan was not an Eagle Squadron member, but one of hundreds of Americans who had volunteered, were trained by and were flying in the British Royal Air Force and the Canadian Royal Air Force. He says he had flow in the Spanish war before that. The film takes place when Paris falls to the Germans on June 14, 1940. The British didn't begin forming the Eagle Squadrons until September of that year. Three Eagle Squadrons were formed by July 1941. Only 244 Americans served in them during the war. In September 1942, the units were transferred to the American Army 8th Air Force. Only four of the original 34 Eagle pilots were still in the squadrons at that time. About 100 Eagle pilots were killed, taken POW or missing by then.

Many more Americans flew for the RAF and CRAF during WW II. Most of them transferred to the American Army Air Force in England after the U.S. entered the war. A wealthy Londoner, Charles Sweeney, paid for the recruiting and training of Americans to fly for the U.K. By December 8, 1941, more than 6,700 Americans had applied for and been approved to join the RAF and RCAF.

One other strange thing about this movie was its release date. It had been filmed from late July to mid-September of 1941. It's premier showing was on Dec. 4 – just three days before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. But, the film's general opening in the U.S. wasn't until Jan. 16, 1942. It was one of the first movies made by Hollywood with World War II action, however exaggerated and unreal.

One thing to the film's credit is that for the most part none of the actors feigned German or French accents. They played it straight in English. Otherwise, the production quality of the film isn't very good. By 1941, the studios were producing much better work than this. Some suggest it was a "B" level film for Universal. Movie buffs who enjoy all aspects of films, including the changing studio logos over time, will have noticed that this film has the second Universal logo. To trumpet fanfare, a glittering ball spins with rays emitting from it, and words encircle it: "A Universal Picture."

This is the movie that proves that Elizabeth Bergner can deliver just as mediocre a performance under Edwin L. Marin's direction as she can when her husband, Paul Czinner, is holding the directorial reins. Admittedly, in this instance the screenwriters have come up with what must be one of the silliest scripts of all time. Sample dialogue: "It's a long chance, and dangerous!" "Oh, Marion, please! I can't bear it when you cry!" This sort of stuff even manages to daunt Basil Rathbone. And Lee J. Cobb is ridiculously miscast as a Gestapo leader. At first, I thought Lee J. was actually clowning around for laughs, but this turned out to be not the case at all. At least Charles Arnt is wide awake and wisely plays his ridiculous lines for comedy. There's a lot of misused talent behind the camera too, including superb photography by Milton Krasner, and even a sequence credited to Jean Negulesco.

From the studio that gave us Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Deanna Durbin comes a Universal issue that had been impacting most of the world for several years and within three days after its release (December 4, 1941!) would hit the United States as well. Nearly forgotten European actress Elisabeth Bergner, looking like a combination of Dietrich and Bankhead, made her sole American film appearance in this French resistance drama that shows the determination of the French people (or at least most of them) of every class to work together to undermine the German invasion. She is a concerto piano player from high society, left alone in an air raid after her mother dies of a heart attack during the strike. With her fiancee (Basil Rathbone) unable to be reached, Bergner takes a job in a cafe run by the modern Madame De Farge like Gale Sondergaard, and when they find out whom she's engaged to, they believe her to be on the side of the Nazi's. Rathbone, it seems, is in league with them, and to prove her innocence, Bergner must re-connect with him to find out the secrets he knows and put a stop to his nefarious traitorous activities. Along the way, she meets an American G.I. (Randolph Scott) whom she hides, and with his help strives to outwit suspicious German officers closely associated with the Gestapo whom she comically refers to as angry policemen.

This film takes a long time to really get its engines revving, and when it does, it seems to become too proud of itself in spreading the warning to American audiences of what could come. The lack of subtlety in its manner is what hurts it most, even though the performances are sincere. The highlight of the film is the lengthy reunion scene between Bergner and Rathbone, with Bergner underplaying her suspicions and growing hatred of Rathbone who hints that even though he believes in a new regime, he hates the people he has to deal with. Sondergaard, whose subtlety and cat like cunning always made her stand out, has a smile that always makes you wonder what she's up to. Eduardo Ciannelli, as her partner in the cafe, is certainly the Ernest DeFarge to her sequined, well coiffed variation of Terese DeFarge, although this time, there's no evil twist to her character even if you can see the wheels always turning in her desire to see the enemy not only captured, but destroyed viciously. This would rank a bit higher in my rating if it weren't for the ridiculous patriotic ending that took any dash of subtlety and smashed it off of the screen. This ends as if it was Jeanette MacDonald singing from the ruins of the earthquake that brought down San Francisco, completely inappropriate and far fetched in this film's case.