Generically titled B+ programmer, a post-WWII courtroom drama about a murdered French resistance fighter, apparently killed by displaced person Cornel Wilde during the war, right before he took off with a secret reel of film on the latest manned German rocket ship. (Docu footage of the experimental snub-nosed jet best thing in here.) The story, told in sequential flashbacks by Commie Resistance head Steve Cochran; escapee pal Karl Malden (overacting to beat the band); and fresh from ‘behind the Iron Curtain!,’ resistance spy/undercover nun Phyllis Thaxter (hopelessly girl-next-door American). It all ends with a none too surprising twist implicating followers of The Party Line, proving Wilde’s heroism & innocence. Alas, the film’s already died under Lewis Seiler’s by-the-numbers direction and thru faulty maneuvers in plot & character. Nicely shot by Ted McCord, though. Quite a change of pace for Wilde whose other 1952 release was Oscar winner THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, third in a series of strictly apolitical Best Pic winners (ALL ABOUT EVE and AN AMERICAN IN PARIS the other two), bookended by three politically engaged (read dangerous) films (ALL THE KING’S HORSES; FROM HERE TO ETERNITY; ON THE WATERFRONT). You really could read Hollywood’s temperature off the Academy Awards back in the day.
DOUBLE-BILL: Wilde’s ‘safe’ 1952 pic, C. B. DeMille’s stupendously corny GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. OR: For a detailed look at French behavior under Nazi Occupation, try the seven seasons of UN VILLAGE FRANÇAIS; particularly good in charting the absurd zigs & zags of the ever changing, ever expedient Communist ‘Party Line’ Doctrine over the course of the war.
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