Reunion in France

Decked out in gowns and outfits designed by Irene, Joan Crawford plays the French version of Scarlett O'Hara with her "Oh, war, war, war" grumbling until she has to duck a bomb while on vacation. Returning to Paris, she finds her house commandeered by the Nazis. She gets only one room for herself and those gowns. In the meantime, her boyfriend, played by Philip Dorn, seems to have gone over to the dark side and is living high. Once she realizes that, she refuses to have anything to do with him. Her patriotism for her country comes to the surface when she helps an RAF pilot on the run, played by John Wayne. Despite some of the other comments on the film, I rather enjoy the handsome Wayne out of his spurs and boots. Because of Wayne, Crawford has to make it look like she's reuniting with her old beau, who has the power to arrange to get him out of the country.

Very entertaining.

Crawford is excellent as a rich French bitch who discovers her patriotism and a slightly softer side to her character when Hitler invades France. John Wayne is the American flyer she gets involved with. The movie is "Reunion in France", a very early Jules Dassin, and it's a good one even if it does fall short of classic status. The plot involves Crawford's suspicions that her fiancée Philip Dorn is a Nazi collaborator, while at the same time helping Wayne escape from the Gestapo and Dassin rings a good deal of suspense from it. The first-rate supporting cast includes John Carradine, Albert Basserman, Henry Daniel, Reginald Owen and in a small and uncredited part of a salesgirl, an up-and-coming starlet called Ava Gardener.

If this slick MGM film had only been intelligently cast, it might have earned a 7 or possibly even an 8. However, it seems that when it came to assembling a cast, the powers that be put the names of actors on a roulette wheel and just spun it--as the final casting decision just made no sense at all. The first and biggest mistake was having Joan Crawford play a French lady. It was very odd that all the other French men and women had correct accents but Ms. Crawford didn't even try to sound or act the least bit French. She was simply way outside her range. Second, what numb-skull thought that pairing her with John Wayne would generate any sparks?! While he was not the only love interest for Crawford in the film, him pawing at her and kissing her just seemed weird and Joan seemed pretty uncomfortable with all this. There was just no way on this planet that such a pairing could occur!

As for the script, I really feel bad for the writers. They managed to create an exciting and different film to get the public behind the war effort. It was NOT a run-of-the-mill and showed some intelligence. But unfortunately all the nice machinations, decent dialog and exciting action got lost due to the casting and oddness of the final product. It's really too bad, but in the end this is just a time-passer and nothing more.

John Wayne is second billed to the other lead, Joan Crawford, because after all this is MGM, Joan's studio, at least for awhile longer. This is a film that was obviously targeting a wartime audience with the objective of building patriotism and morale, so you have to look at the miscasting in the context of the times. Joan Crawford plays a French woman who seems to be plumbing the depths of shallowness in her high-rolling lifestyle until the Germans invade. She returns to Paris to find her fancy home confiscated, her boyfriend helping the Germans, and her inner patriotism aroused. She runs across an RAF pilot (Wayne) who has been shot down, and she must play up to her boyfriend and his German friends in order to help Wayne evade capture. Forget the fact that the actors playing Frenchmen don't sound French, that Wayne doesn't sound British, and that the Germans are portrayed as not being smart enough to find Berlin on a map, and just have fun with it. If you are a film history buff like myself, you will see much worse and weirder material about WWII particularly in the early war years.

Reunion in France finds Joan Crawford as an upper class French woman happily engaged to industrialist Philip Dorn and confident that the French army will defend the Maginot Line and the Germans will be defeated once they make a move west. Of course history and the film both tell us it didn't work out that way.

When she arrives back in Paris because she's away in the country when the surrender happens, she finds that the Germans have taken over her house to use as office space, but they've permitted her to occupy one room on the ground level with its own entrance to the street.

That's a minor inconvenience compared to when she learns that her fiancé is collaborating with the Nazis.

Around that time a young flier with the RAF Eagle Squadron, John Wayne, accosts her in the street and gets her to take him in. He's escaped from Nazi custody and looking to get back to Great Britain.

This is a minor film in the credits of both John Wayne and Joan Crawford in there one and only film together. Crawford was being slowly eased out at MGM and she knew it. Still she was a professional if nothing else and gives the role her best. The part called for her to look chic and those Adrian gowns were in play again.

John Wayne doesn't even get into the film until almost 40 minutes into the story. When he does get in, even though he makes a play for Crawford, the Duke has some real problems as Crawford in order to help him has to play up to Dorn and his Nazi friends. It's not the John Wayne we're used to because it really isn't his film.

There's been some criticism by other reviewers that Crawford doesn't sound French. Then again neither does anyone else in the film. The rest of the cast. The cast in fact has a variety of European and American accents, Frenchmen weren't in good supply at that point in Hollywood, either that or they were otherwise committed. Surely Crawford was no more French sounding than Humphrey Bogart in Passage to Marseille.

Albert Basserman is the commanding general in Paris and the fellow who Dorn cultivates. John Carradine may be the best one in the film as the Gestapo agent who knows there's something fishy with Crawford, but can't quite prove it.

Both the Duke and Joan Crawford had better days ahead of them. Still the film is a curiosity and worth a look.