It seems that Mitchell Leisen was in love with France and Paris and the results were often excellent ("arise ,my love" "midnight" ).In other movies he displays the same Francophilia ,even if the stories do not take place there :"Frenchman's creek " , "Hold back the dawn" .
"Bedevilled" (the ludicrous French title is "Boulevard De Paris"!),sadly is not in the same league as the works I mention above. He couldn't capture the Parisian zeitgeist and the chemistry between Ann Baxter and Steve Forrest is nonexistent.It takes a lot of imagination to believe that they are eaten with desire and that the would be future priest has to fight to stay chaste .The story is muddled and worthless ,the kind of story an average viewer has been told and told and told.
For the French audience ,there are some of our actors: Victor Francen as a priest was already used by Leisen in "hold back the dawn"(he reads the famous lines of the statue of liberty,a gift from France to the USA!) ;Simone Renant as an ambiguous clothes designer and fashion businesswoman Forrest meets on the plane ;Maurice Teynac is the villain and Raymond Bussières the concierge.
Leisen's wit and his good sense of humor have metamorphosed into an annoying and very unsatisfying lack of weight or consequence and into what we have got to call bigotry.
"Bedevilled" (the ludicrous French title is "Boulevard De Paris"!),sadly is not in the same league as the works I mention above. He couldn't capture the Parisian zeitgeist and the chemistry between Ann Baxter and Steve Forrest is nonexistent.It takes a lot of imagination to believe that they are eaten with desire and that the would be future priest has to fight to stay chaste .The story is muddled and worthless ,the kind of story an average viewer has been told and told and told.
For the French audience ,there are some of our actors: Victor Francen as a priest was already used by Leisen in "hold back the dawn"(he reads the famous lines of the statue of liberty,a gift from France to the USA!) ;Simone Renant as an ambiguous clothes designer and fashion businesswoman Forrest meets on the plane ;Maurice Teynac is the villain and Raymond Bussières the concierge.
Leisen's wit and his good sense of humor have metamorphosed into an annoying and very unsatisfying lack of weight or consequence and into what we have got to call bigotry.