Assignment: Paris (1952)

Marta Toren died at 30 in early 1957, and finding the films on DVD that she was able to make before her untimely death isn't the easiest task. But after watching her and Bogart in Sirocco (1951), I realized I had left this DVD sitting unwatched for four years.

I guess I left it unwatched because it's a newspaper cold war drama, with no stars who stood out to me... But since I now know Toren, I was anxious to give this a watch.

Overall, pleasant surprise. Jimmy Race (Dana Andrews) falls for Jeanne (Toren), and one wonders if a romance will ensue. She seems a little unsure about that, and meanwhile, he needs to go to go to Hungary to follow a story. Unfortunately, he sends back information, gets arrested, suffers torture, and is sentenced to death.

A swap takes place, and Jimmy returns to France. But he's not the same man. He comes back a shell, and we are left wondering if he will be able to recover. That, to me, is the "weird ending" element, because we're never told. Jeanne seems like she would be willing to stand by him and nurse him back to health, but the ending doesn't provide any closure on that either.

Overall, good noir feel. I like the characters, and nice attention to dialogue.

P.S. Fun fact I learned watching this movie. A road used to go straight through the Eiffel Tower. I looked into when that was changed, and a quick Google search just indicated that yes, there was a through road in the 1950s, and the Eiffel Tower access was originally closed off to the pedestrian area we know now. As a side note, I also found out that an Allied fighter pilot flew his plane through that same Eiffel Tower gap in 1944, apparently in pursuit of a German plane...

Rating: 4/5

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