Tramas de Traição

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.

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.

Foreign Intrigue is as bland and generic as its title. Its scantily credentialed director/writer/producer, Sheldon Reynolds, did an early-1950s TV series with the same name, so this movie looks like a bid for big-screen immortality. Alas, it's one of those polyglot productions that suggests financing flowed from several European countries, with strings attached to several cast members; there's no other way to account for their presence.

A wealthy man of mystery drops dead in his villa on the Riviera. His American press agent (Robert Mitchum) finds him but suspicions grow when he's asked four times in succession if his employer `said anything' before he died. So Mitchum sets out to discover who the man was and how he accumulated his fortune. He starts with the merry widow (Genevieve Page) and travels on to Vienna and Stockholm, where he falls for the daughter (Ingrid Thulin) of a deceased industrialist whom may have been a blackmail target. Mitchum finds that he, too, is being followed....

Foreign Intrigue brings to mind Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin of the previous year, memories of which emphatically ought not to be freshened. There's little true suspense, though the score, by Paul Durand and Charlie Norman, insists that yes, there is. Reynolds tosses in a little Alfred Hitchock here, a little Carol Reed there, but to little avail. About three-quarters of the way through, the picture reaches a lugubrious crescendo by revealing a vast global conspiracy harking back to the Third Reich. The only sensible reaction to all this is Mitchum's, who knew a good paycheck when he saw one and saunters through the movie with his eyes half-shut, as only he could do. Even so, he remains the only reason to sit through this foreign travelogue devoid of intrigue.

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.

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.