Foreign Intrigue

source: Foreign Intrigue

Dave Bishop's job as assistant to Victor Danemore comes to an abrupt end when he finds his boss dying at the library of his well appointed house in the French Riviera. Dave cannot get over his surprise every time someone asks him whether the dead man said anything to him before he passed away. Even the dead man's wife does not appear to have been shocked by his sudden demise. Dave, following a hunch, goes on to Germany to meet with a lawyer who has a letter that was to be opened in case of foul play. Alas, someone gets to this man before he does, making Dave Bishop the suspect for the investigation that follows. The only other clue is in Stockholm, where the figure of a certain Mr. Lindquist is tied to the mystery that Dave is trying to uncover. Our only interest in watching this 1956 film was because of Robert Mitchum, the star. Basically, this film's plot makes not much sense with complications that will confuse viewers not paying attention to what is going on. Directed by Sheldon Reynolds, who was involved in television, so the acting is by the numbers. This was the era when Europe was a cheap way to get fantastic backgrounds to set their films. It can clearly be seen in this production.

The story for this film is lame and uninteresting. A bunch of Nazi double agents are going to be exposed 10 years after the war.. The writer(s) obviously didn't know much about neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland...why would Hitler have picked one man to seize power in those countries? These countries were neutral and made no difference to the war. In any case how could one man per country seize power or make any difference at all...it is all so incredibly stupid. This film is bad... after about a half hour I was ready to pull the plug...but didn't. It is richly filmed and might make a good travelogue but what a bunch of lousy writing and directing. There is no intrigue in Foreign Intrigue...everything is listless with some sort of jazz sound track completely incongruent to the action... Even the Swedish girl falling in love with Michell is flat and unconvincing... maybe she is a bad actress or was badly directed? BOTH! Robert Mitchum cruises through the film on Valium with his eyes half shut. Avoid this movie!

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.

I first saw this film as a young boy, and then for years it could not be seen on television, or for that mater anywhere else. I saw the film for the last time in the early 70's, until it was released again early again in this century. Others have gone into the plot of this film, and I will not do that. What is interesting for me is that the plot of the story is interesting, and it has one of the most unusual ending of any film made in the 1950's. Also while some have criticized Mitchums performance and if he is walking through this film, I think he plays it just right, a man of cool. Ela Fitzgerald once commented that she liked the way Mitchum walked. During the open sequence we see him, I am sure she is referring to this film. Watching him, you realize that if the opportunity had come, and he had wanted to, he could have been the American equivalent to James Bond. Perhaps he could have played the character that Dean Martin would play of Matt Helm, and in films that would have been more in keeping with the books. He really carries this film. His performance reminds me a little of the character he played in OUT OF THE PAST, a wiser Jeff Bailey perhaps. I see parallels with MR. ARKADIN and THE THIRD MAN, it really tries to be the latter, though does not succeed. It does have the classic look of the film noir, darkness with light shinning through certain areas of the frame, unusual for a color film of the time, and can be quite enjoyable to watch. Also the traces of the Noir film come immediately through when he informs his employers sexy young wife that she now has to become the grieving widow. Eastman color, while cheaper than the original Technicolor, does have a tendency to fade over time. When I first saw this film in color, it was rather gorgeous to look at. Perhaps the comment about the horrible Eastman color is due to the fading of these prints. If you liked Robert Mitchum in other films, I highly recommend this film just to see him. Without him the film would not be worth seeing at all.

The plot of this movie has been reviewed before and I have no surprises to add to these summaries, since there are are very few surprises. Several strange characters asking questions, yet it all comes to little. Even then big 'surprise' of the source of the financier's money was predictable. The only surprise - and it wan't planned by the director - for those of us like me who were born in the last 50 years, was Genevieve Page as a semi-sexy mistress. I have always associated her with 'mature-women' roles and have assumed she was born "mature". Other reviewers saw the background music as a plus. I saw it as a decided negative, way too overwrought and intrusive. In the Third Man the noticeable theme music added to the suspense, emphasizing the dynamism what was on the screen. In this movie, the loud flourishes seemed out of place against the wooden movements of the actors. This entire thing was a throwaway. My score of 3 points was given because the picture was in focusand it wasn't too long. It was not quite as bad as The Curse of the Aztec Mummy but close.

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.

Why this film has not been issued on video is puzzling. It has an unusual and compelling plot, attractive locales (shot on location in Europe) and features the inimitable Robert Mitchum. Derived from the television series of the same name, it captures the "take me somewhere far away and adventuresome" escapism of the time. The musical underscore (the original TV introductory piano concerto and a coronet forward jazz theme) continues to this day to swim in my head. Mitchum plays a reluctant investigative patsy persuaded against his better judgment by interpol intelligence to help track down the perpetrators of a scheme to blackmail various politicians who had secretly agreed to ease the invasion of their respective countries by the Nazis. While the film lacks a true denouement (it ends with the Mitchum character about to rendezvous with the prime suspect), the photography, the acting and above all its ingratiating style certainly have made it memorable in the mind of this viewer.

"Foreign Intrigue," a 1956 film starring Robert Mitchum, starts out promisingly enough and peters out. Despite filming in color in France, Sweden, and Monaco, even the film's beauty can't overcome its slow pace and dull script. Mitchum plays Dave Bishop, who works for an international man of mystery, Victor Danemore. Danemore dies of a heart attack suddenly, and Bishop wonders why every single person he encounters wants to know if Danemore said anything before he died. Even after working for him, Bishop doesn't know much about him, but he endeavors to find out. He learns that Danemore went to Vienna once a year and goes there. Danemore's home there is in a slum, his housekeeper is blind, and can only supply him with one name, Olaf Lindquist from Sweden. Bishop finds Lindquist's home, but the man himself is dead. Bishop and Lindquist's beautiful daughter Brita (Ingrid Thulin) fall for one another; meanwhile, it's obvious her mother is keeping a secret. Soon Bishop finds himself being followed by one man, Spring (Frederic O'Brady) who won't tell him who he works for, bad-mouthed by Danemore's widow (Genevieve Page) to Brita and her mother, and approached by a group of men who want the names of the men Danemore met yearly in Vienna. First of all, despite compliments on the music, it was totally overbearing, not to mention loud and intrusive. If you liked it, fine, it was just too over the top for me. Secondly, this film took way too long to make its point. In the beginning, it was intriguing, but then it began to drag. Thirdly, we think we're going to find something out and guess what, after all this, we don't. Robert Mitchum is laid-back and sexy as usual - in this instance, I can't tell if his persona helped the movie or hurt it. He was always a very deliberate actor and perfect for noir - I realize some people call this a noir, and perhaps it was, but the payoff just wasn't there. It's hard for me to imagine Mitchum hurting a film - I think in this case, I'll have to blame the script and the fact that some time could have been edited out. Promising start - disappointing finish - pretty to look at.

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.