Innocents in Paris

Moviecut—Innocents in Paris

source: Innocents in Paris

I saw this on tv years ago but watched it today via new blu ray. It is good fun and of interest in how it tells its story. Even for 1953 it is cosy and unrealistic,I did not expect anything else. But it has a lot of location filming in Paris and it looks great. As someone obsessed with aviation history I expect they did provide meals on flights to Paris in this period. Flying was for richer people then and this was before the jet age,the flight would have been longer than it is nowadays. Passengers would expect food and drink on nearly all flights.. One of the reviews here made me scratch my head. France famous for poor food produce? Really? British airliners always crashing? Well we know about the Comet but Britain had a mighty aviation industry in the 1950s. The French talk about the 30 glorious years of growth and prosperity after WW2. I never found out exactly which years? 1945-1975? 1948-1978? In any case France recovered from world war 2 thanks to the Marshall plan but also to the hard work of its citizens and due to having an economic plan.

This comedy is remarkable mainly for its superb cast, its charming performances and its kindly, good-natured tone. It's a friendly work that tends to take a benevolent attitude to humanity. There is much to enjoy : watch Alastair Sim as a diplomat with a Russian counterpart addicted to the word "no", Margaret Rutherford as a painter who meets a kindred soul, Louis de Funès as a taxi driver with a good grasp on the economic realities of life, and so on. (What is it that makes Paris stand out as the Capital of Love in the Anglo-Saxon mind ? Say "Paris" to an English-speaking person and you will get tales of love, romance, embroidered garters, ooh la la sauciness. And of course someone is going the hum the can-can, preferably to Offenbach's Infernal Galop.) Sadly "Innocents in Paris" feels somewhat more like a collection of anecdotes than like an integrated, interconnected tale. A few efforts in the screenplay department might have added a whole new layer of wit. Be sure to watch a good copy. I watched (and enjoyed) the long, uncut version, but there seem to be truncated versions going around.

If the film had concentrated just on the Sim, Rutherford, and Bloom characters then it would have been much more enjoyable. Instead it bounces around between five/six characters allowing just enough time for a punchline and then we're on to the next. I could have done without the American? Woman in the hotel, the guy in the kilt, the loud mouth with the handle bar moustache, and the military band. Should be a 5. But watching Alastair Sim get drunk and Claire Bloom in a bathing suit raises it to a 6.

Half a dozen British subjects board a plane for a weekend flight to France and find themselves innocents in Paris. It's one of those movies in which several individual stories take place at a common venue, here with a mostly humorous theme. With a couple of comedy pros like Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford headlining the cast, Claire Bloom (fresh from her role in Chaplin's LIMELIGHT and James Copeland in more romantic plots and lesser stars to fill in the gaps, there's something for everyone. It's a thoroughly pleasant effort with a script by Anatole de Grunewald and enough actual French talent to lend the necessary Gallic charm to the proceedings. Sim and Rutherford are, as always, delights, and the rest are amusing in their standard stories, although I can understand why the 100-minute movie is usually cut; although the subplot with Laurence Harvey as a French valet de chambre is good, the movie, as a whole, seemed to drag a bit.

Innocents In Paris is several tales interwoven of a few British subjects going over the Channel on a weekend jaunt to gay Paree. For some like stuffy British diplomat Alastair Sim it's business as he's at a European economic conference as the British delegate. Pleasure almost gets forced on him as he arranges a back channel meeting with Russian delegate Peter Illing who shows Sim the pleasures of vodka and champagne and a few other things that Paris offers. They even get a little business done. Margaret Rutherford is just Margaret Rutherford as an eccentric painter who for a weekend does a Gene Kelly as she paints and sells her product in the streets of Montmartre. Romance in this film is handled by young Claire Bloom who gets some heavy wooing by Claude Dauphin. That one doesn't go quite on course, still it's a once in a lifetime experience. That and a few others make Innocents In Paris a delightful experience and a look at post World War 2 Paris. It still holds up well because the experiences are eternal.

A week-end in Paris. Too many characters are crowded into 100 minutes, making implausible romantic and other connections. Film might have been better with fewer story- lines, and certainly the 87-minute version, which excludes the Mara Lane/Laurence Harvey incidents, is an improvement over the longer version. This is a cross between an attempt (1) to display "slice of life" and (2) to provide some "charming" atmosphere. Unfortunately, this overlong attempt is riddled with clichés. It is unfunny where humor was intended, and fails to move where pathos was intended. Completely misses the mark as a farce or light comedy. Only Rutherford, Sim and Gordon's presences slightly redeem this waste of time, so in their honor it seems three points are in order, one for each of those actors.

I am obliged to review this very minor effort due to Christopher Lee's uncredited involvement in it, which lasts for all of 30 seconds(!), appearing merely to inspect an English military band before and after their flight to the titular location. The film is a British comedy, very typical of its era, and pitting established (Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford) with emerging (Claire Bloom) talent – not forgetting local, i.e. French, star presences (Claude Dauphin and Louis De Funes). To be honest, caricatures of various types emanating from these two countries have been done to death over the years – to have them engage in a clash of cultures, then, is even more lamentable (though it was obviously devised and intended as an irresistibly hilarious notion!)…and to which is even added that of the humorless Russian diplomat, who takes offense when his British counterpart (the perennially-flustered Sim) rather tastelessly compares the effect of drinking vodka to the devastation caused by an atom bomb – and who can only concede to the Western way of thinking while under the influence himself!! Unsurprisingly, the narrative takes up several strands of plot as the various passengers of a plane enjoy a week-end in the French capital; most of these are wafer-thin and alternate between improbable romantic trysts (including a Scotsman falling for a local girl) and the idiosyncratic pursuit of a particular hobby (painting and indoor cricket!). Mind you, the film is tolerable enough for what it is – but it is certainly not among the better examples of its kind, especially when considering that the copy I acquired ran for 86 minutes against the movie's official duration of 102…which makes me wonder just how long was the print shown on local TV during the early 2000s, but which I had not managed to either view or record back in the day! Suffice it to say that, while Laurence Harvey's name and face is prominently featured in some of the film's theatrical posters (apparently playing a French waiter!), he was nowhere to be seen in the print I watched!!

Several first-rate farceurs are saddled with inconsequential material in this tepid, disappointing comedy. Six disparate travelers fly to Paris for a weekend jaunt and find various adventures. Naive English rose Claire Bloom finds first romance with middle-aged lady killer Claude Dauphin; art lover Margaret Rutherford buys a fake Mona Lisa and winds up preferring it to the original; marching band member Ronald Shiner has a close encounter with a prostitute; Scotsman James Copeland picks up a pert French girl, then suspects her of snatching his wallet; pompous Jimmy Edwards spends the entire weekend downing ale in a British pub. And, best of all, treasury minister Alastair Sim goes on a drinking binge with a recalcitrant Russian official and teaches him the pleasures of the word 'yes.' In this one instance, the material rises to meet the actor with hilarious results. (The highpoint comes when a cockeyed Sim attempts to negotiate an economic treaty while swilling Vodka and pawing a Russian chanteuse.) The rest of the cast aren't so fortunate, left to founder on Parisian locations at the mercy of writer Anatole de Grunwald's toothless whimsy and Gordon Parry's unimaginative direction. The filmmakers deserve to be charged with criminal negligence. With Richard Wattis, Stringer Davis, and in throwaway bits, Gregoire Aislan and Luis de Funes.