Night Train to Paris

(1964) Night Train to Paris THRILLER/ ESPIONAGE

Starring Leslie Neilson as international travel agent, Alan Holiday visited by a lady, Catherine Carrel (Aliza Gur) sent by a former friend and secret agent, Jules Lemoine (Hugh Latimer) to secretly transport an important tape cassette from the UK to Paris. It is soon revealed that the tape Alan was given was fake, and once Jules is murdered, he is then motivated to go to Paris to find out what it's all about. Lifeless, dull and pretentious with many unconvincing and unexciting moments. The only bright moments is perhaps the musical score, everything else is pretty much forgettable.

Leslie Nielsen spends most of the final third of this film pursued by a hit man while disguised in joke spectacles with a false moustache; but it's not a comedy!

The jaunty credits sequence suggested more light-hearted fare than we actually get; and despite the fact that four people get murdered the British censor still only gave it a 'U' certificate. Maybe the producers didn't let director Robert Douglas - best remembered by film buffs as a cold-eyed villain in Hollywood swashbucklers, recently turned TV director - in on the joke. This was the only feature film Douglas ever directed - plainly shot on a shoestring even by British 'B' movie standards - and I suspect this was also originally intended for TV as well; especially as the handsome fellow he brought with him from Hollywood to play the lead was also a TV mainstay at the time. (At odd moments he suggests a certain goofy comic flair that might have flourished in more adroit hands; I wonder what became of him?)

Much of the film resembles a rather talky and sub-par British 'B' of the period with the usual obtrusively loud jazz score, redeemed as usual by considerable period charm and occasionally enhanced by excellent location photography by Arthur Lavis and featuring the usual suspects like Eric Pohlmann as a ruthless killer and Cyril Raymond as a detective; neither wearing their usual moustaches, ironically.

The era it evokes now seems as remote as the silent era; with the McGuffin taking what then seemed like the incredibly high-tech form of a spool of magnetic tape containing sensitive political information.

"Night Train to Paris" is a British B movie that stars Leslie Nielsen back in his TV days, when he was a reliable leading man. It wasn't until later that his persona took on the comedy that gave him an incredible second career. Here he plays Alan Holiday, an ex-OSS officer living in London and now apparently working as some sort of travel agent. After a series of murders, it falls to Holiday to deliver a magnetic computer tape to Paris on New Year's Eve. The ruse employs a photographer and models on a night train. Throughout the trip, the tape is hotly pursued.

This film is benign enough with neither the plot nor the execution giving Alfred Hitchcock any sleepless nights. The train scenes are well done, however.

It's all pretty silly, with Nielsen donning one of those combo nose and eyeglasses jobs to disguise himself, and the tape being tossed around like an old sandwich. The standout is Edina Ronay as one of the models. Her beauty and attitude embody the '60s London. She's a real bright spot.

Mindless entertainment.

Those who thought Leslie Nielsen was born with white hair and a silly expression are wrong. Sceptics will say that it is theologically impossible, but we have here incontrovertible proof in Nielsen's case of Life before Birth. (Of course, connoisseurs will have known all along that he appeared in 1956 in 'Forbidden Planet', with Walter Pidgeon, and even began acting as long ago as 1950, but that is our little secret.) The idea of Leslie Nielsen as a young leading man, as he is here, in an attempt at a spy thriller, seems too incredible. His comic talents are already emerging and he just cannot help himself, he sends up the script time and again. This film is so silly and so kitsch that it epitomises everything that was wrong with Britain in 1964. Whoever imagined for a moment that the Israeli actress Alizia Gur could conceivably be a sensuous female lead? Whatever charms she may have had (and the women in this film mostly thrust forward their busts by way of self-assertion, but it does not work very well), they are well-concealed by the hideous head band and beehive hairdo popular at that time, which were guaranteed to make any woman totally unattractive, and in this case succeeded entirely. Dorinda Stevens comes in rather late in the story and adds a much-needed touch of gravitas, but she seems to have stepped in from a serious film and joined the wrong cast of characters; this was her last feature film, so maybe she got smart. Eric Pohlmann, omnipresent in those days as a heavy, sweats and grunts here as he garottes people, never taking off his hat and trenchcoat. (Honestly, it would be more polite when murdering someone at least to take off your hat!) There is a kind of story, not much of one, but it mostly takes place on a night train to Paris (good shots of how the coaches were transferred to the ferry to Dunquerque at Dover), and there is a rather wrinkled packet containing a computer tape which gets passed around rather at random, looking increasingly as if the prop department had no budget at all. Somehow governments will rise or fall if this tape does not get to Paris, but no one seems really to believe that, and although people get killed, it is clear that they are risking their lives not for la Gloire but for the box office. At this time, films could still be made in black and white without being guaranteed box office failure as long as there were some murders. How long ago this all seems: the streets of London are empty, the train platforms are empty, there was nobody there, no waves of immigrants, no over-population, and 'fun' was simply bopping up and down with confetti in a train carriage for New Year's Eve, with alcohol being the strongest thing to take. Oh yes, Edina Ronay is in the film, very pouty lips, luxuriant hair, good figure, exuding sex appeal and a cheeky personality. Well, there are worse ways to while away a rainy afternoon. as long as your teeth are tightly clenched and you brace yourself to endure 1964 again (or for those who did not endure it, experience it for the first time in all its incredible banality).

This is a real "sleeper" (no pun intended), a tight, compact suspense film that really keeps moving throughout its economical running time. The cast is uniformly superb, the direction is assured and fluid, and the film is a reminder of just how many quality low-budget films were made even into the 1960s, before the collapse of the double-bill and the end of black and white as a commercial medium. Well worth looking for; I don't know if the film is available on tape. It should be.