Clearly Elizabeth Bergner wasn't thinking of posterity when she did her one and only Hollywood film. As a person of Jewish background who had the good sense to flee the Nazis in the early Thirties I'm sure she felt that doing this film about the early French resistance movement was patriotic in some way. Patriotic maybe, but bad and not a product that wears well, no doubt.
In Paris Calling Bergner is an entertainer in love with Basil Rathbone an official of the French government. What she doesn't know, but finds out is that Rathbone has been a collaborator for years plotting to bring the Nazi ways to France. He's not even a collaborator after the fact of the invasion. In other words, a traitor and a rat. It doesn't help that Bergner's mother is killed on the way to Bordeaux where the French government and Rathbone have fled.
Though it takes some time for them to accept her Bergner becomes quite the resistance worker. She's aided and abetted by downed RAF flier Randolph Scott, an American in their Eagle Squadron.
Watching the film I was convinced that I was seeing a routine World War II era flag waver. But at the end when a mass escape of resistance fighters is affected after the Nazis have discovered them I just said to myself this was way too much. I had always considered Errol Flynn's escape in Desperate Journey was the ultimate in Hollywood lunacy, but this one may have topped it. I won't reveal a word, you'll have to see it evaluate for yourself.
For her fans in Europe who might have got to see this after the war this had to be a painful experience. Equally so for fans in the English speaking world who saw her in Escape Me Never, Catherine The Great, or As You Like It.
I'm sure Bergner wanted to forget it and it may be why she never did another Hollywood film.
In Paris Calling Bergner is an entertainer in love with Basil Rathbone an official of the French government. What she doesn't know, but finds out is that Rathbone has been a collaborator for years plotting to bring the Nazi ways to France. He's not even a collaborator after the fact of the invasion. In other words, a traitor and a rat. It doesn't help that Bergner's mother is killed on the way to Bordeaux where the French government and Rathbone have fled.
Though it takes some time for them to accept her Bergner becomes quite the resistance worker. She's aided and abetted by downed RAF flier Randolph Scott, an American in their Eagle Squadron.
Watching the film I was convinced that I was seeing a routine World War II era flag waver. But at the end when a mass escape of resistance fighters is affected after the Nazis have discovered them I just said to myself this was way too much. I had always considered Errol Flynn's escape in Desperate Journey was the ultimate in Hollywood lunacy, but this one may have topped it. I won't reveal a word, you'll have to see it evaluate for yourself.
For her fans in Europe who might have got to see this after the war this had to be a painful experience. Equally so for fans in the English speaking world who saw her in Escape Me Never, Catherine The Great, or As You Like It.
I'm sure Bergner wanted to forget it and it may be why she never did another Hollywood film.