Femmes traquées

In a late example of a fading Hollywood star going to England for a career boost, delectable Constance Bennett plays a madcap, irresponsible Yankee stuck in occupied France. She's uses her glam appeal to aid the resistance & help Allied troops escape with the help of co-hort Gracie Fields, the Brit Music Hall star in her final screen perf. The whole unlikely enterprise is done with reasonable flair under surprisingly lively direction from Gregory Ratoff and stellar lighting from lenser Lee Garmes. Too bad no one was able to turn the corner for the last act when the film tries for a darker, more serious tone, but it's well worth a gander. As is the still jolie Mme Bennett.

Paris Underground (aka: Madame Pimpernell) is a solid British entry in the war/intrigue genre produced immediately after cessation of hostilities with Germany in 1945 by aging, but still glamorous, American star Constance Bennett and distributed in the United States by United Artists.

Ms. Bennett, a somewhat flighty American married to a French foreign office official, and her middle-age spinster pal Gracie Fields, while fleeing the city during the fall of Paris in 1940, find themselves by happenstance carrying a downed British aviator in the trunk of their automobile. Turned back to Paris by a German road bock, they have to take the flier back to hiding in Gracie's apartment. One of the best and most suspenseful scenes occurs when the girls have a flat with the pilot in the car's rear, and a Nazi officer stops to assist them! By hook and crook they eventually manage to smuggle the young aviator to Free France. Delighted with their success, they establish and underground railroad that eventually gets hundreds of allied airmen back to their bases. With a combination of American audacity and British pluck, these two brave and resourceful women cause the occupying Germans a big headache.

Sharply directed by Gregory Ratoff and atmospherically photographed by Lee Garmes, Paris Underground is tense, exciting, and believable. Acting by the two female leads is first rate with good support coming from Argentine actor George Rigaud as Ms. Bennett's husband, Kurt Kreuger as a suave but cruel Gestapo captain who would like to be more than friends with the ripely beautiful Ms. Bennett, and Eily Malyon as the grouchy concierge of Ms. Field's hotel. Editing is a little untidy in places, with some scenes taking too long to unfold. However, the story is never draggy, but engaging and exciting from beginning to end. Alexander Tansman's florid but stirring score, which drew an Academey Award nomination, drives the action along at a gallop.

This picture bears some resemblance to glitzier Joan Crawford vehicle Reunion In France (1942). While not up to competing head-up with that big hitter in the entertainment department, the more staid Paris Underground is somehow more believable and is an enjoyable, inspiring little potboiler in its own right for fans of the war/intrigue thriller.

Gregory Ratoff's Academy Award-nominated "Paris Underground" is one of the movies released immediately after WWII that took an almost absurdly heroic view of things. In this case, two women - one from the US, the other from England - are in France when the Nazis invade, and they start coming up with ways to smuggle British troops out. In this day and age it'll probably remind us of "Dunkirk", but obviously lacks the brutal realism. It's not any sort of masterpiece, but it still manages to be intense enough to hold the viewer's attention (especially the apartment scenes).

Worth seeing, if only once.

This is much better than it seems. It appears to be a rather flimsy female travesty on "Pied Piper", two ladies in Paris getting stuck in the war and unvoluntarily becoming involved in smuggling British pilots and spies out of the country, an enterprise they carry on successfully, until they are caught and taken under treatment by the Gestapo; but the story is actually quite good, one of the ladies, the American one (Constance Bennett) being married to a Frenchman, the film starting with their quarrelling, but he plays an important part throughout the film and adds to the dramatic thriller of the finale. It is well made with a great score by Alexander Tanzman, and although much of it may seem rather petty and over-wrought with female concerns, it is worth waiting for the development of the drama.

Paris Underground is the US title for the British film originally titled Madame Pimpernel. Hollywood distributors were pretty savvy about advertising and marketing these types of films, and thought that Madame Pimpernel was a bit too obscure for the vast majority of American film viewers. They were most likely right on the money. Both Constance Bennett and Gracie Fields give outstanding performances in a film basically carried by two leading female characters; a real rarity in film, and almost a non-existent rarity in Hollywood. That is why Bennett had the film produced in England; a very wise move.

The story of two women in Paris in the early days of Paris occupation by the Germans is quite a compelling story. One marvels at the dramatic effectiveness of Gracie FIelds, who would become much better known for her teaming with George Burns for classic US television comedy. FIelds carries off the dramatic role without missing a beat. Bennett is also very effective. George Rigaud does a competent job as the French husband of Fields in Paris, as his wife begins a series of underground adventures, rescuing over 200 fallen airmen, one at a time, over a period of years, until the American liberation of Paris. Although the film has a few stops and starts, and the conclusion occurs faster than a German blitzkrieg, the main body of the film is very entertaining and is very solid. Don't miss it.