Die fünfte Kolonne

The musical score almost makes it unwatchable. The same transition music throughout the film consists of a tom-tom and Gilligan knocking on a coconut with two wooden dowels. It's enough to cause a coma. That being said, the rest of the film's attributes out-weigh the migraine-inducing music.

Mitchum is classic, using his debonair best to woo admirers of his old-school, Hitchcockian style. (Wonder why Hitchcock never really used him?)

The cinematography uses the 1956 color like an oil painting, still incorporating the contrast and shadows of a black and white noir classic.

It's worth a watch.

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.

Robert Mitchum, employee of a mysterious rich guy with a mysterious source of income, gets involved in FOREIGN INTRIGUE when he seeks out the source of his newly dead employer's seven figure lifestyle on the Riviera. Will the natural scenery of the Riviera, Sweeden and Vienna overwhelm the scenery provided by Bob's bodacious costars?

This is an entertaining enough movie -- and would have been a lot better without the atrocious musical score -- but it is slumming for Mitchum, who probably took the role for the free visits to European hotspots. The main interest IS Mitchum, who acts the role in an interesting fashion. By acting, in each scene, that he just can't quite believe the mother lode of BS that he has just been handed by some suspect, spy type, cute girl, or plot development, he sort of steps aside from the move, and whispers to us that he knows this is all nonsense, but bear with him, the movie won't be too bad. And, because he does that, it really isn't.

Now, frankly, this is a dead-end as an acting approach, and the cul-de-sac at the end is Roger Moore at the close of his James Bond period. But it works for this movie and this actor, where a straighter approach probably just would have failed. We should be grateful, though, that a sequel, suggested by the ending, was not produced.

In order to review this movie, you need to put yourself back into the 50s when it was made. WW2 was just a decade before (closer than Desert Storm is to us), and the cold war was raging. Tales of spies, traitors, and exotic locations were just the ticket for mid-50s audiences. FOREIGN INTRIGUE has plenty of interesting turns and surprises, but it seems to be trying too hard to mix THIRD MAN with MR ARKADIN and perhaps a bit of WW2 Hitchcock (Sabotage, Foreign Correspondent?). I'm not a big Mitchum fan, but he gives his usual looming, low-key performance, and the supporting players do well. My real reason for watching this film (and I've been waiting over 30 years to catch it) is to see Frederick O'Brady, who plays the heavy (he was reviewed at the time as "out-Lorrying Peter Lorre."). He was my French teacher in 1973-74 at the Eastman School of Music and a great raconteur. He had enormous talent in music, languages, writing, and of course acting (having worked with Orson Welles in ARKADIN, plus Jean Renoir, Roger Vadim, and others). If you can find his autobiography ALL TOLD, you'll be fascinated. He told us that Mitchum tried to teach him to drive during the making of this movie, resulting in a wrecked car. Some thought this would be O'Brady's ticket to Hollywood, but instead French directors dropped him, assuming he would be asking too much money for "lowly" French pictures. He spent many years on stage and never had another juicy film part like "Spring" in this picture. If you enjoy the spy genre and aren't in a big hurry for lots of blazing action, find this movie!

I first saw this film as a young boy, and then for years it could not be seen on television, or for that mater anywhere else. I saw the film for the last time in the early 70's, until it was released again early again in this century.

Others have gone into the plot of this film, and I will not do that. What is interesting for me is that the plot of the story is interesting, and it has one of the most unusual ending of any film made in the 1950's. Also while some have criticized Mitchums performance and if he is walking through this film, I think he plays it just right, a man of cool. Ela Fitzgerald once commented that she liked the way Mitchum walked. During the open sequence we see him, I am sure she is referring to this film. Watching him, you realize that if the opportunity had come, and he had wanted to, he could have been the American equivalent to James Bond. Perhaps he could have played the character that Dean Martin would play of Matt Helm, and in films that would have been more in keeping with the books. He really carries this film. His performance reminds me a little of the character he played in OUT OF THE PAST, a wiser Jeff Bailey perhaps.

I see parallels with MR. ARKADIN and THE THIRD MAN, it really tries to be the latter, though does not succeed. It does have the classic look of the film noir, darkness with light shinning through certain areas of the frame, unusual for a color film of the time, and can be quite enjoyable to watch. Also the traces of the Noir film come immediately through when he informs his employers sexy young wife that she now has to become the grieving widow.

Eastman color, while cheaper than the original Technicolor, does have a tendency to fade over time. When I first saw this film in color, it was rather gorgeous to look at. Perhaps the comment about the horrible Eastman color is due to the fading of these prints.

If you liked Robert Mitchum in other films, I highly recommend this film just to see him. Without him the film would not be worth seeing at all.