Innocents in Paris

Don't look for something deep, shocking or dramatic. This is a quiet, very charming little movie, with a number of humorous, lovely scenes. It contains several slices of life from the weekends of six characters visiting Paris, each with their own goals, problems and hopes.

The visiting characters are played by outstanding British actors and actresses. There is an absolutely priceless performance by Alistair Sim as a stuffy British diplomat. Margaret Rutherford plays to perfection the ever-lovable character we know from her other stellar performances. The only problem is finding a good copy of this movie. Hopefully some studio will realize its appeal and a good DVD will appear.

Ignore the agenda-driven propaganda from other reviewers.

I saw this on tv years ago but watched it today via new blu ray.

It is good fun and of interest in how it tells its story.

Even for 1953 it is cosy and unrealistic,I did not expect anything else.

But it has a lot of location filming in Paris and it looks great.

As someone obsessed with aviation history I expect they did provide meals on flights to Paris in this period.

Flying was for richer people then and this was before the jet age,the flight would have been longer than it is nowadays.

Passengers would expect food and drink on nearly all flights..

One of the reviews here made me scratch my head.

France famous for poor food produce? Really?

British airliners always crashing? Well we know about the Comet but Britain had a mighty aviation industry in the 1950s.

The French talk about the 30 glorious years of growth and prosperity after WW2.

I never found out exactly which years? 1945-1975? 1948-1978? In any case France recovered from world war 2 thanks to the Marshall plan but also to the hard work of its citizens and due to having an economic plan.

After the war, France was a mess — an agricultural economy with a bad reputation world- wide because of near universal collaboration with the Nazis. America resolved to rebuild Europe and part of the plan was to cast Paris as a romantic place, in spite of its history. Hard to believe today, but Paris is wholly a cinematic invention.

The instruction went out to US and UK studios. The US studios went along to protect valuable monopolies, already eroding. UK studios required a subsidy. Many famous and important films followed.

This is one of the subsidized UK films. (Included in the story is a joke about the safety of air travel. The first British airliner was a disaster, with many crashes.)

Several Londoners visit Paris for the weekend and have their lives changed by the romanticism of the place and people. As with most subsidized films, including many French films to this day, it stinks.

The story is broken into five threads: a statesman, Scotsman, young pretty woman, old bat, and marine in a marching band.

The young woman is Claire Bloom when she was pretty. But the only thread that has any charm at all is the one that follows Margaret Rutherford and her always present husband, Stringer Davis. She's unique, inventing a character that has become a stereotype.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Innocents In Paris is several tales interwoven of a few British subjects going over the Channel on a weekend jaunt to gay Paree. For some like stuffy British diplomat Alastair Sim it's business as he's at a European economic conference as the British delegate. Pleasure almost gets forced on him as he arranges a back channel meeting with Russian delegate Peter Illing who shows Sim the pleasures of vodka and champagne and a few other things that Paris offers. They even get a little business done.

Margaret Rutherford is just Margaret Rutherford as an eccentric painter who for a weekend does a Gene Kelly as she paints and sells her product in the streets of Montmartre.

Romance in this film is handled by young Claire Bloom who gets some heavy wooing by Claude Dauphin. That one doesn't go quite on course, still it's a once in a lifetime experience.

That and a few others make Innocents In Paris a delightful experience and a look at post World War 2 Paris. It still holds up well because the experiences are eternal.

A fun little adventure with Alastair Sim on form as usual (always watch Sim closely to get the best from his performances). Margaret Rutherford is her usual dippy, wonderful self and a host of other fifties household British names pop up (including Christopher Lee), in this easy to watch little adventure.

Fifty plus years on, it doesn't really matter what the political motivations of the film were, it's an entertaining little story with a beginning, middle and an end.

There's a lot of dross been made since 1953 and this film by no means takes a back seat. Sit back and enjoy.