Between big-budget Hollywood hits in 1952 and ‘54 (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL; 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA), Kirk Douglas took a career detour with a pair of modest foreign productions chosen to show range rather than profit. An early Israeli feature, THE JUGGLER, and ths WWII memory piece where he plays an ex-soldier visiting The French Riviera for the first time in belated tribute to the young woman he loved and lost as the war was ending. Director Anatol Litvak, whose long international career flirted with greatness, but never quite crossed over, has A-list support (scripter Irwin Shaw; editor William Hornbeck; art director Alexandre Trauner) for Douglas and ‘debuting’ Dany Robin* as wary/unmarried roommates of convenience whose relationship turns to love in over-crowded Paris. Lying to the landlady to get the room, a jealous local suitor (a typically superb Serge Reggiani) and some overly complicated plans to make things legit, instead put it all in jeopardy. A simple story of Parisian & military bureaucracy and the limits of romance, you know where this is going, but Litvak supplies such specific verisimilitude time & place become real characters, make that adversaries, to the couple. And if the present day wraparound opening and closing feel a little pat, most of the film is touching and memorable.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE JUGGLER. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-juggler-1953.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Dany Robin gets an ‘And Introducing’ title in the opening credits in spite of having appeared in about twenty films before this. It’s not even her debut in English.
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