ThiefHott Too much of everything
FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
secondtake Foreign Intrigue (1956)An underrated transition film, a low budget affair that is pure European color and style. Visually, it almost presages the Euro-American "Charade" which was decidedly more up budget. Here, the director, an unknown Sheldon Reynolds, takes advantage of all the empty spaces and long pauses the pace required. The lighting is flat, almost anti-noir, with widescreen grandness and yet an oddly impersonal intimacy. Not to be contradictory--the scenes are generally quiet, with close conversations, but everything is filmed from a certain, and constant, distance.It is this steady, quiet pace that makes the film work. And Robert Mitchum. He needs no explanation. The first of the two or three main women he connects with is a bit false, but the main one is a caricature of the Nordic beauty, and with sincere energy and charm. At times it really does look like she is smiling at Mitchum, not his character, as if she can't believe she's touring Stockholm, etc., with this famous man, and the movie gets away with it. Mitchum for his part keeps his cool, except for the necessary fist fight once or twice.It's 1956, and international intrigues like this are slowly rising into a genre of their own. People come and go, scenes are not what they seem at first, people have false identities and foreign accents. The big theme (too big to believe, but that's okay, it's supposed to be) is that realignment of global power after WWII. The real thing, made up of shadowy individuals who seem to be above nationality, and only know about intrigue, money, and winning at any cost.I don't want to pump this up too much. It's slow at times, and the acting not always right on. The effects (the atmosphere, the fights, etc) are sometimes so archly false you can't quite accept it even as theatrical, but just a cheap. But that's the exception. Fall into the pace of it and it's not bad at all.
mw1561 I just saw this film for the first time and I was disappointed. I was expecting more of a "film noir" type of movie. Instead I got a too-complicated plot that made less and less sense as the film went along. And the love angle was far too weak. Robert Mitchum goes to Stockholm, meats a girl, and less than 24 hours later she is madly in love with him, and the film makes scant effort to explain why.Basically the plot involves the blackmail of men who were closet supporters of Hitler. But after the demise of the Third Reich one could assume that uncovering their identities would take on less importance, but if that were the case then there would be no movie.This movie is spy vs. spy vs. spy, with good guys appearing as bad guys, and so forth. It's been done many time before and in much better ways, such as The Third Man.
dr-don This tale of intrigue concerns the American business manager (Robert Mitchum playing "David Bishop") of wealthy European Viktor Dannamore in post-WWII Europe. Without the barest introduction, the action draws the protagonist into a whirlpool of downward-spiraling intrigue surrounding the death of his boss. One learns first that there is something going on between Mitchum and the dead man's wife. The wife then turns out to be "in the game" as well, and from this point--with Mitchum fleeing the Austrian police only to fall into the arms of a beautiful girl (whose late father was an associate of Dannamore). A dizzying array of characters enters this swirling, yet understated drama, either singly or in pairs. And while seem drawn straight out of period spy and intrigue, not one is stereotypical or boring, but highly individualistic and perfect in his (or her) role. The spare, refined dialogue, set against the backdrop of great post-war capitals such as Vienna and Stockholm, is enticing and convincing. And despite the intrigue everywhere, the film's most striking undertone is romantic.A real surprise was that the film moved quickly without the help of modern gaudy action sequences, riveting the viewer to the screen. Not one step or one turn is predictable, and the perfect casting lends an intense attractiveness to this period film. Although not nearly as well-known as other spy-films of the era, "Foreign Intrigue" should rank with great espionage thrillers such as "The 39 Steps" and the far bleaker and more realistic "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold".I was not prepared at 2:30 in the afternoon for a film of this quality and have never seen a surprise ending of this caliber.
silverscreen888 This is my idea, as a writer, of a great ethical mystery. The intelligent narrative tells the story of an American working for a mysterious and very wealthy man named Victor Danemore. One day at his estate on the French Riviera, the great man, played by Jean Galland, dies. Robert Mitchum as Dave, the assistant, goes to the man's wife, lovely Genevive Page, for information; she knows nothing either. His odyssey to try to find out what he needs to know about his mysterious employer leads him to Vienna and to Stockholm--and finally to the fact that Danemore had been blackmailing Nazi collaborators who were afraid their wartime crimes would be discovered. At the end, having been saved narrowly from the bad guys, who are actually good guys testing his ethics, he goes off to seek out the real ex-Nazi collaborator bad guys in as many countries as he must; by then the lovely young woman he has fallen in love with, Ingrid Thulin (brilliant as always) is going to be waiting for him. This is a project conceived by Sheldon Reynolds, who wrote the script along with Gene Levitt and Harold Jack Bloom and also directed this fascinating movie. He was also the mind behind another Euro-American on-location project, "Dateline:Europe", one of the best half-hour TV series of all time,one which utilized (as this feature movie) does European technicians, actors, locations and artists. (When people talk about " the sorts of movies 'they' used to make and don't or can't any more", this is the sort of international, intelligent, adult and well-scripted film to which the disappointed are referring). The music here by Paul Durand is good, the cinematography by Bertil Palmgren frequently stunning. The piece also has many actors in small but telling parts, including Inga Tingblad as Thulin's mother, George Hubert, Frederick Schreidler, etc. They are all professional and exactly right for their parts; and all the parts contribute to a whole that moves with the inexorability of a tide toward a satisfying climax and an unforgettable ending. A personal favorite.
