This film is pretty good but oddly uneven. The script (which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder both worked on) is about the adventures and experiences of soldier-of-fortune Ray Milland and reporter Claudette Colbert across western Europe from Spain to Germany and then to England. Colbert is working for an American syndicate out of Paris that is headed by Walter Abel. She goes to Spain, where the Spanish Civil War is ending with a Fascist victory. Milland is going to be executed (he's been fighting for the Republic), and Colbert tells the prison governor (George Zucco) that she is married to Milland. She is allowed to see Milland, and helps spirit him out of the prison for the sake of the interview and scoop. They get to France, and Milland proceeds to romance and slowly win Colbert.
The rest of the film is done against the background of the worsening international crisis, seen first hand by our hero and heroine. Colbert does not like the Nazis, but she is slower on the realization that they are not limited in their goals but determined to spread control over as many peoples as possible. Milland (when not trying to break down Colbert's "friends only" point of view) is showing her the ropes of the real German led threat to Europe and the globe.
The unevenness (despite having Wilder and Brackett working on the screenplay) is due to the nature of the light banter between the romantic leads, and the growing threat they observe. It is not a glaring weakness, but it seems to split the film in half at times.
Sometimes it has a belated effectiveness in carrying out the warning of the movie. Abel is all business and hectic confusion (Esther Dale, as his secretary, helps keep him directed to his purposes) in sending Colbert to her jobs and getting her stories back to the U.S. At one point we find Milland and Colbert in Paris, with the latter doing his best to get Colbert to loosen up - taking her to Maxim's and other romantic nightspots in that city. It does eventually wear down her resistance to him. But late in the film it is June 1940, and Abel is on hand to see the entrance of the victorious Nazis into Paris. He has a very good moment when his business viewpoint dissipates in shock as he realizes the "city of lights" is in the hands of these modern barbarians. His comments at that moment make us think back to the brighter Paris we saw earlier in the sequences at Maxim's.*
(*A curious sidelight: Although from different studios, the events of that June day play a role in Paramount's ARISE, MY LOVE, and Warner's CASABLANCA: Bogart and Dooley Wilson flee Paris (to avoid arrest from the Germans) by train, and Bergman deserts Bogart (to return to the wounded Paul Henreid) at the same time that Abel is watching the arrival of the same German troops.)
Despite the unevenness the film is worth seeing. It has many good moments in it (including an unexpectedly bumbling Zucco - his usual evil control of events thwarted by his act of kindness to the pretty Colbert). It is also, as far as I know, the only movie to mention a forgotten war crime of the opening of the war: the torpedoing and sinking of the steamer Athenia off Ireland with loss of life. The incident (in September 1939) is not as recalled as the similar Lusitania incident of 1915 in the same waters because the losses were not as huge (fortunately). Oddly enough the Nazis were quick to be aware of the similarity, and the Goebbels propaganda machine cranked up a story that the British were responsible, not the Germans. Nobody believed it then or since.
Despite it's somewhat split personality the film gets an "8" out of "10".
The rest of the film is done against the background of the worsening international crisis, seen first hand by our hero and heroine. Colbert does not like the Nazis, but she is slower on the realization that they are not limited in their goals but determined to spread control over as many peoples as possible. Milland (when not trying to break down Colbert's "friends only" point of view) is showing her the ropes of the real German led threat to Europe and the globe.
The unevenness (despite having Wilder and Brackett working on the screenplay) is due to the nature of the light banter between the romantic leads, and the growing threat they observe. It is not a glaring weakness, but it seems to split the film in half at times.
Sometimes it has a belated effectiveness in carrying out the warning of the movie. Abel is all business and hectic confusion (Esther Dale, as his secretary, helps keep him directed to his purposes) in sending Colbert to her jobs and getting her stories back to the U.S. At one point we find Milland and Colbert in Paris, with the latter doing his best to get Colbert to loosen up - taking her to Maxim's and other romantic nightspots in that city. It does eventually wear down her resistance to him. But late in the film it is June 1940, and Abel is on hand to see the entrance of the victorious Nazis into Paris. He has a very good moment when his business viewpoint dissipates in shock as he realizes the "city of lights" is in the hands of these modern barbarians. His comments at that moment make us think back to the brighter Paris we saw earlier in the sequences at Maxim's.*
(*A curious sidelight: Although from different studios, the events of that June day play a role in Paramount's ARISE, MY LOVE, and Warner's CASABLANCA: Bogart and Dooley Wilson flee Paris (to avoid arrest from the Germans) by train, and Bergman deserts Bogart (to return to the wounded Paul Henreid) at the same time that Abel is watching the arrival of the same German troops.)
Despite the unevenness the film is worth seeing. It has many good moments in it (including an unexpectedly bumbling Zucco - his usual evil control of events thwarted by his act of kindness to the pretty Colbert). It is also, as far as I know, the only movie to mention a forgotten war crime of the opening of the war: the torpedoing and sinking of the steamer Athenia off Ireland with loss of life. The incident (in September 1939) is not as recalled as the similar Lusitania incident of 1915 in the same waters because the losses were not as huge (fortunately). Oddly enough the Nazis were quick to be aware of the similarity, and the Goebbels propaganda machine cranked up a story that the British were responsible, not the Germans. Nobody believed it then or since.
Despite it's somewhat split personality the film gets an "8" out of "10".