Paris Underground (1945)

During the German occupation of World War II, an American wife in Paris, Kitty (Constance Bennett), arranges with her older friend, Emmeline (Gracie Fields), to smuggle a British soldier out of France.

Satisfying War-Time Suspense

It's Paris, 1940, and the Germans are just about to take the city. Kitty de Mornay (Constance Bennett) is the slightly self-centered, sophisticated American wife of a diplomat in the French foreign office. Kitty loves amusement and laughter and she thinks her husband has become too serious lately. She decides to leave him, at least for a while, and to stay with an old friend, Emmeline Quail (Grace Fields), a British citizen who owns an antique shop. With the Germans moving in they think it's best to drive to unoccupied France. Along the way, however, they encounter a downed British pilot. Kitty decides they can't just leave him, so they hide him in the trunk of her roadster. But after meeting some German troops and a Gestapo officer, they know they can't continue so they return to Paris.

From then, partly though happenstance, partly through Kitty's love of adventure, partly through luck and party through determination, they find a way to transfer the pilot from France and across the border to Vichy. The pilot is the first of 359 allied airmen the two women help send back to Britain. Eventually they are captured, tortured and imprisoned until the Allies retake Paris. The movie is based on a true story.

This is a war-based suspense film that was produced by Constance Bennett. It was largely forgotten until Image put out this DVD. It's no classic, but it's a well-made film with a number of nail-biting sequences. If it's a bit melodramatic at times, particularly toward the conclusion of the movie, this is because it now and then slips into showcasing Bennett doing drama. For the most part, however, the producer Bennett has conquered the temptation to focus unduly on the actress Bennett. Constance Bennett was a big star in the Thirties (Topper). She's a bit brittle and cool, it seems to me, but still does a good job as the high spirited Kitty who finally finds a better calling than entertaining herself. Kitty's good friend is played by Gracie Fields in her last movie. Fields was one of the most popular singer-comediennes in Britain during the Thirties. Here she's the perfect Englishwoman of a certain age, practical, sensible, indomitable. Bennett and Fields make a good team. The acting in some of the secondary roles, in my view, is a little shaky. On the other hand, the movie also features solid performances by Vladimir Sokoloff as an ingenious French undertaker and Kurt Krueger as a Nazi officer.

On balance, if you like older WWII suspense films, this is a nice one to have. It's a solid, entertaining movie. The DVD picture is just fine. April 28, 2005

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