Claysaba
Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
robert-temple-1
This largely forgotten film is a good mystery tale, and well made. Robert Mitchum is the star, and he pulls it off with his usual sang froid. Particularly delightful is the appearance of Swedish star Ingrid Thulin (of Ingmar Bergman fame), under the name of Ingrid Tulean, as a beautiful Swedish girl who falls in love with Mitchum. How delectable she was, aged 30, and one year before she charmed the world by starring in Bergman's masterpiece WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), which was her first Bergman film (she had worked with him previously in stage productions and would eventually make 10 films with him). I have no idea why she called herself Tulean in the credits for this film, however. It needs to be pointed out that FOREIGN INTRIGUE (with an alternate title of DATELINE EUROPE) was the title of a television series, screened in 1951-5, amounting to 156 half-hour episodes. Inrid Thulin appeared in seven episodes of that series in 1954-5, the year before this film was made. Ingrid Thulin appeared in that under her real name. I am unable to say whether this film represents part of the story of the series or has no connection with it other than Thulin and the title. This film was written, produced, and directed by Sheldon Reynolds. I see that prior to this film, Reynolds produced a TV movie entitled FOREIGN INTRIGUE: JEANNIE in Swedish (though apparently without Thulin). This is not listed on IMDb under his name, but only is discovered if you find the page on the Swedish TV film itself. Reynolds is chiefly distinguished for having produced 77 of the 156 episodes of the TV series FOREIGN INTRIGUE just mentioned and 63 episodes of two Sherlock Holmes TV series, 39 of which starred Ronald Howard as Holmes (1954-5) and much later, 24 of which starred Geoffrey Whitehead as Holmes (1979-80). As a director, he directed 11 episodes of FOREIGN INTRIGUE and 9 and 4 episodes of the two Holmes series respectively. For me, the highlight of this film however was to see the Belgian actor Eugene Deckers play a significant supporting role. When we were young, my wife and I met Deckers (who died in 1977) in the early 1970s, when he was living in an atelier at the top of an old building on the Quai d'Anjou on the Isle St. Louis in Paris. He was an interesting and lively person, more interested in painting than in acting, and he told us that he earned enough money to live and continue his painting by 'doing occasional acting work in films'. He used live models, and I well remember we turned up on one occasion when a naked girl hastily put on her dressing gown as he put down his brush. Now, the real reason for my being so interested in Eugene (apart from liking him and knowing his daughter and son-in-law), is that I was reading a novella by Patrick Modiano entitled CHIEN DE PRINTEMPS (known in English as AFTERIMAGE, in the volume SUSPENDED JUDGEMENTS) last year when suddenly I realized with a shock that one of the supposedly fictional characters was named Eugene Deckers, and in Modiano's story he lived on Quai d'Anjou on the Isle St. Louis. This made Eugene into much more of a man of mystery for me, because Modiano has appropriated Eugene's precise identity and precise address to become a fictitious character in a supposedly fictional tale. This led to my looking into the matter more closely. With Modiano (a Nobel Prize Winner for Literature), people often wonder where the borderline between reality and fiction really lies. His books are all about the vagaries of memory and of disappeared persons, only partially remembered. It seems that my wife and I are, apart from Eugene's daughter Nina, the only people left alive, apart from Patrick Modiano, who knew the real Eugene and know that the fictitious Eugene is the same as the real Eugene, a fact which Modiano has never made public. It seems that Eugene and Modiano's mother, who also came from Belgium and was involved with films, must have known each other. In that way, Modiano's mysterious father must have come to know Eugene. What was Eugene's real connection with the Modianos? And why is it masked in the novella, where Eugene becomes a ghost like all the rest, and I must say, to us also. Whenever we are on the Isle in Paris, we remember Eugene. We remember when the Brasserie de l'Isle used to serve wine au conteur, where you only paid for how much you drank from a bottle, which was measured with a ruler. My old girl friend Caroline Glyn lived on the Isle. Did she and her family know Eugene? They must have done so. Alas, all these ghosts have taken their secrets away with them. They are all now in the Land of Shadows. And I am as perplexed and involved with the attempt to recall memories of them as Modiano is of his ghosts. The fact that Modiano and I share a ghost, now there is something.
kapelusznik18
***SPOILERS*** The sleepy looking Robert Mitchum has a hard time staying awake here as press agent Dave Bishop for the extremely rich, he's worth hundreds of millions, and secretive Howard Hughes like Victor Danemore, Jean Gallard, who died of a sudden heart-attack at his villa on the French Rivera. With everyone he comes in contact with in knowing that he was the last person to see the great but elusive Danemore alive Bishop is constantly asked what were the last words that the great man said before he expired? The only words that we as well as Bishop herd Danemore say was some kind of gargling sounds that were totally unintelligible. Finding out that Danemore made a number of trips to Vienna a couple of times a year Bishop travels there to find out what they were all about and if they and anything to do with his untimely death.This all leads to some cock & bull story about Denemore's past in him finding out that before WWII he was very active in sniffing out stories about Hitler and those he dealt with. It's then where he somehow got information about a number of important persons in different European countries who made a deal with Hiter to sell their countries out to the Nazis. And when Hitler and his Nazis took over make them the heads of state as a reward for their treasonous actions. Now with the war over and Hitler being dead and no threat to anyone Denemore is still using that knowledge to blackmail them to pay for his high flying lifestyle! Bishop finds out one of those his former boss Danemore was blackmailing Swedish industrialist OIaf Lindquist who committed suicide, in not being able to take it anymore, five years ago. Smelling a big story Bishop takes the first plane out of the Vienna airport to Sweden to interview Lindquist's widowed wife ,Inga Tidblad, in an attempt to find out what he was being blackmailed for.It's in Sweden that Bishop also meets Lindquist daughter Brita, Ingrid Tulean, and starts to, in having noting else on his mind, romance her. The complected plot also involves the late Danemore's gold digging wife Dominique, Genevieve Page, who despite losing her meal ticket wants to keep the money, from her husbands blackmailing, rolling in. It's Dominique who uses the naive Bushop to find the names of the persons he's been blackmailing all these years. There's also the mysterious Johnathan Spring,Frederick O'Brady, who's working for one of those whom Denemore was blackmailing who keeps springing up in the movie to give Bishop a hard time and even tells the , what looks like, barley awakened conscious Bishop that he's to assassinate him! That's after he gets his hands on the information about those whom he's blackmailing. Whom unknown to both Spring & Bishop Dominique already got her hands on!****SPOILERS***** The film goes on an on with a number of mindless sub-plots about nothing that makes any sense at all and ends with the hero, who's desperately trying to stay awake, Dave Bishop taking off not with the girl,Brita Lindquist, but the man who's sworn to murder him Jonhatan Spring into the sunset or, like at the end of the movie, moon-set. Robert Mitchum being as popular as he was back then just had to sleepwalk, which he did an excellent job of, in his part of press agent Dave Bishop to make the movie a smashing success in the box office. But as things turned out the film attended at, back in 1956, a premium $2.50 ticket price barley broke even in the box-office that within two years after its release it was sold to network TV to be seen, for the few who were still interested in seeing it, for free.
Syl
The late legendary actor Robert Mitchum stars in this film where his employer dies under mysterious circumstances. Genevieve Page was wonderful as the widow. She played the role perfectly and I'm surprised that I haven't seen much of her work before. She played the widow with a complexity rather than the silliness often accompanied with films of the time period. The other actresses who played Mrs. Lindquist and her daughter also done a brilliant job. The film is set on the French RIviera where they go to Vienna, Austria and later Stockholm, Sweden. Mitchum was the perfect actor to play this role as Bishop. He is leading man material with his appearance. His performance is perfectly under-rated where he tries to solve the mystery of his late employer. The foreign intrigue adds especially only after a decade later than the end of World War II. This film is a gem to watch where movies were just an escape but filled with romance, adventure, and intrigue.
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.
