Paris After Dark (1943) User Reviews

George Sanders leads the French Resistance

[gordonl56 · 7/10 · 4 November 2015]

Paris After Dark 1943

This 20th Century Fox production, is another one of the myriad of mid WW2 films about the French Resistance against the German occupiers. This one stars George Sanders, Brenda Marshall, Philip Dorn, Marcel Dalio and Madeleine LeBeau.

George Sanders is a doctor working at a Paris plant that is making tanks for the German Army. He is also the leader of the local French Resistance group. His number 2 is Brenda Marshall, who is also his nurse at the plant hospital. The group mainly just posts leaflets and such calling for sabotage of products and materials for Germany.

Philip Dorn, Marshall's husband, returns to the family after several years in a German P.O.W. camp. The Germans have released prisoners that are too sick to work for their cause. Dorn is a broken man, both is body and spirit. He wants nothing to do with the resistance movement etc.

The anti-Nazi group work out of a hidden room in the local café. They hold their planning meetings there with the odd get together at the home of Sanders. (The radio to London is hidden there) The local barber, Dalio, is a collaborator in the employ of the Gestapo. He makes a tidy bit of cash reporting on any funny behaviour in the area.

The Germans decide they are going to round up 500 able-bodied men and send them to Germany to work. Several of the younger lads, including, Marshall's younger brother, Raymond Roe, decide to head for Spain. They are however rounded up by the Gestapo types on a tip from Dalio.

This of course goes nowhere good for young Roe. He is shot by the German officer in charge of the area. The Nazi swine, Robert Lewis, is then shot by Marshall from an upstairs window. Marshall is not seen doing the deed. Lewis is badly wounded and Sanders is forced by the German's to save Lewis. If he fails, the Gestapo will shoot 50 hostages. Marshall is also drafted in to help save the man you had killed her brother.

Sanders and Marshall manage to save the Nazi officer's life, thus saving the 50 hostages from death. The Germans however go back on their word, and order the hostages shot unless the person who shot Lewis comes forward.

All this has convinced Dorn that he can no longer stay out of the fight. He tells Sanders that he will confess to the attack on Lewis. But he wants Sanders to make sure that he gets his wife, Marshall to safety. Sanders, agrees, and promises to get the woman to England.

While not the best of the "resistance" type films, it does keep the viewer entertained. Sanders is always worth watching. Dorn, Miss LeBeau and Dalio had all escaped Europe just ahead of the Nazi's and ended up in Hollywood. Dalio and his ex-wife LeBeau would have parts in the best example of the genre, CASABLANCA.

The director, Léonide Moguy was also an escapee from the German invasion of France. His Hollywood films include, WHISTLE STOP and ACTION IN ARABIA (also with George Sanders)

A good but uneven World War II propaganda movie

[richard-1787 · 6/10 · 5 August 2014]

This movie has a lot of weaknesses, but its heart is in the right place, and there are definitely good moments for those who enjoy this sort of movie.

The only other reviewer of this movie here on IMDb mentioned "Mrs. Miniver," and the comparison is very valid. That very stirring if often melodramatic movie was made to convince Americans in the early 1940s, still given to isolationism, that the English were worth helping because they were good, decent, and courageous people.

"Paris After Dark" is very similar in that it was made to convince Americans that France, too, merited our help. The situation was very different, however, so the convincing had to be different.

France had declared an armistice shortly after being overrun by the Nazi war machine in 1940. Maréchal Pétain, head of the French armed forces, convinced the government to do so, and then collaborated with the Nazis for the rest of the war, for which he was tried after it. As a result, many Americans saw the French as cowardly and lacking in the sort of moral fiber that "Mrs. Miniver" spends all its time demonstrating to be the very essence of the English character.

So "Paris After Dark" spends a lot of time arguing that 1) the average Frenchman and -woman, Joe/Jane France, was really courageous, and had had nothing to do with signing the armistice, and 2) that all of France, all classes and both sexes, were already fighting the Nazis through the Resistance, even at the risk of their own lives - thereby showing their courage, moral fiber, etc.

This produces a lot of stirring speeches by various of the characters, which, admittedly, often come off as unnaturally oratorical. But you can see what the scriptwriters and the director were trying to achieve.

The acting is uneven. George Sanders and Philip Dorn are both very good. Both are men who have to be won over to the Resistance efforts, and their conversions are convincing. Brenda Marshall, the female lead, sometimes overacts, and is not at their level. Marcel Dalio, so good in so many movies, doesn't do a convincing job with the traitor barber.

If you've seen American movies made in the 1930s that are set in France, you know that Hollywood had often presented the French as rather foolish. Here it does an admirable job of presenting a wide spectrum of French folk, among them lots of average but very noble individuals.

Yes, it's preachy at times. But the cause justified that.

If Hollywood's contributions to the war effort interest you, you will find much of interest here.

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A note after a second viewing: This movie, released in 1943 before we had landed on the Normandy beaches, deals with France at what was a real turning point in the Occupation.

On the one hand, the collaborationist prime minister, Pierre Laval, had just negotiated an exchange of workers to be sent to Germany - the STO, Service du Travail obligatoire - in exchange for French prisoners to be released home to France. (The Germans were holding 1.9 million French soldiers prisoner as part of the Armistice Pétain signed in June, 1940.) The ratio was 3:1, three Frenchmen - or women - sent to Germany to work in exchange for one French soldier to be released. It created further hatred for Germany, as the occupying forces began enforcing the "obligation" for men to leave. Many faced with such deportation joined the French Résistance, as Georges and his three friends try to do in this movie.

On the other hand, American forces landed in French North Africa - Morocco and Algeria - at the end of 1942, and after a rather swift campaign, defeated the Germans and Italians there. (If you've ever seen "The Desert Fox", you know that story.) It was called Operation Torch, and, as we see near the end of this movie, it gave the French their first real shot of hope that the Allies had not abandoned them and would, someday, free France as well.

As I wrote above, a lot of this movie is oratorical. People give speeches, sometimes even to the camera. But the last part, where Jean is won over to the cause of the Resistance, is really very moving.

The Paris underground foiling the Germans in the middle of WW II

[SimonJack · 7/10 · 25 September 2021]

"Paris After Dark" is one of the war-time movies that 20th Century Fox made. While not outright propaganda films, many such Hollywood films were morale boosters and signs of hope in the war effort. Just in showing the efforts of people in Axis occupied countries, and their efforts to fight the enemy, Hollywood gave hope and encouragement to the American public and people in Western Europe and free Asia. Although the story here is fictional, it is about a very real underground resistance that was operating in France during the war.

One wonders how this film, and others like it during the war, might have had some effect with Nazi leaders in France. Surely any number of German sympathizers and spies in the U. S. and Great Britain might have seen this film and been moved to urge greater Nazi surveillance and crackdowns. How would Hitler and/or the higher commands have handled such while managing Germany's ever-stretching war fronts?

This film is about the French underground operating in Paris. It shows the efforts of the loyal French aiding the Allied combat forces in the war, by doing what it could to sabotage German facilities and plans. A fine cast gives good performances, with George Sanders in the lead as Dr. Andre Marbel. His status as a medical doctor provides good cover for his movements around Paris. Brenda Marshall plays his nurse, Yvonne Blanchard. Likewise for her being able to move about with little suspicion.

Yvonne's husband, Jean (played by Philip Dorn) has been a German POW for three years and is one of several dozen French POWs released to go back home. They are all ill and can't be used in work details. Jean shows up a frightened, weakened man. He is opposed to anyone who wants to fight the Nazis. They have to just bide their time and get along. He is upset to discover that Yvonne is part of the resistance.

But, after her brother, Georges Benoit (played by Raymond Roe) is machine-gunned in public by a German colonel, Jean comes around. He regains his senses and courage when he discovers that Yvonne was the one who then shot the German colonel.

The story has a hopeful ending. One can imagine that wartime audiences would leave the theaters pulling for the people in the resistance movements wherever they were.

Here are a couple of favorite lines from this film.

Yvonne Blanchard, returning from shopping, takes out the few groceries. "A present from the grocer - an egg." Madame Benoit, "If only I had the chicken it came from." Papa Benoit, "Oh, you're asking too much, dear."

Jean Blanchard, "The only ones who don't know fear haven't fallen into their hands yet."

Paris After Dark

[CinemaSerf · 6/10 · 3 December 2023]

Set amidst the Nazi occupation of Paris, this film follows the perilous lives of those trying to balance their routine "public" lives with organising the resistance. Leading their efforts is "Dr. Marbel" (George Sanders) who manages to stay on decent enough terms with the brutish "Col. Pirosh" (Robert Lewis) by helping treat his soldiers. Not everyone knows of his more patriotic role, though, and he frequently earns the enmity of his compatriots. "Blanchard" (Philip Dorn), meantime, has just returned from a period of incarceration and is pretty shell-shocked, his spirit broken and his nerves on edge. He tries to encourage a policy of co-operation - to stay alive. This causes ructions with the hot-headed "Georges" (Raymond Roe) whose tragic murder galvanises the locals just as the Allies land in Algiers. It's a bit wordy this, but Léonide Moguy does create a sense of the constant state of fear in which the population lived at the hands of their malevolent new masters. It's not a particularly notable effort from Sanders, but Dorn and firebrand Roe contrast well as people have to make almost impossible choices to keep themselves, and their families, from a potential firing squad. It's not really got an ending, more a work in progress and though perfectly watchable, isn't really very memorable.

Paris After Dark - Intense Wartime Drama

[arthur_tafero · 7/10 · 21 September 2023]

Yes, the film is a bit over the top. Yes, it is corny and sentimental in several instances. And yes, it does contain several stereotypes and cartoonish portrayal of Germans. However, despite all of these failings, the film is very successful for one reason; authenticity. The film is authentic because it was made smack in the middle of the German Occupation of France. The emotions portrayed by the French in this film are as genuine as one can get from a film.

George Sanders plays a lower-case Schindler in the film, and does a very good job, despite having to play a good guy (he is so much more effective at playing cads, neer-do-wells, and unfeeling characters). Brenda Marshall does an outstanding job as the lead actress, and Philip Dorn is very effective in his role of a lifetime as a returned POW.

The film does skip over one or two important elements of Vichy France, however. It plays up the resistance very well, but it does not really show how many of the French (Vichy Government) collaborated with the Germans. The single exception is an Italian barber, but Luigi is obviously not French (it is a sly slap at the Italians for being allied with the Germans). Luigi, to be sure, is a lowlife, but there were several thousand French lowlifes as well that supported the Vichy government. There are several good dramatic moments in the film, and one instance of selecting the lessor or two evils over the impulse to let a Nazi officer die. Compared to the dozens of other "French Resistance" films made since then, this one is easily in the top ten.

This land is mine.

[ulicknormanowen · 5/10 · 8 January 2022]

Just before WW2 , Leonide Moguy peaked with his extraordinary " je t'attendrai/le déserteur" ,the first movie with a real-time structure in the history of the seventh art ;I urge the users to try and watch this unsung materpiece.

Like Jean Renoir ,he spent the Occupation years in the US ,and like him and his "this land is mine" ,his movie dealing with French resistance suffered accordingly .

Moguy's depiction of the dark days of an occupied Paris cannot be taken seriously : where are the housewives standing in line to get some rutabagas? And these resistance fighters talking in daylight?-it was a very secret network- (the title is a misnomer , most of the action occurs during the day ); the German officer ,waiting for the young man to deliver his subversive speech ,before shooting him down ? These released POW?

Forget historical accuracy and you may enjoy some elements of this fiction: the most moving character is played by former child actor Raymond Roe as Georges: the young man refuses the STO (forced labor instituted in France by the Nazis during WW2),after the medical exam -one of the rare scenes which are historically plausible- and decides to join the general de Gaulle in England ;when he's captured , his words are so convincing that he makes us forget the implausibility of the situation (the Parisians applausing in front of the German soldiers ) ; though supporting , Roe steals the show from seasoned George Sanders ,cast as a doctor. French actors are featured ,notably Marcel Dalio as Marcel Dalio ,namely the usual villain, the suave collaborator.

Philip Dorn is cast as Jean , a former POW ,tired of the war, but who eventually sacrifices his life( one learns he' terminally-ill though) to save the hostages (it's doubtful that the nazis would have accepted the deal) ;it's a pure propaganda movie,and from that point of view, can be considered a successful movie.

A War-time Film of Conviction

[Danryd80 · 8/10 · 14 March 2014]

Set in German-occupied Paris, the plot concerns the day-to-day struggles of the French resistance during WWII, made all the more believable by a cast chosen from among real-life refugees – in other words those who were eye-witnesses to the film's historical backdrop. I suspect that when "Paris After Dark" played in small-town America, the world it unveiled was still rather exotic. Even with full-on U.S involvement after Pearl Harbor, the idea of an underground resistance for most Americans was something shadowy and obscure. New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther, though not at all impressed, did acknowledge "the terrible tragedy of the French people under Nazi occupation" which the film evoked. However, this is a film that holds its own alongside similar portrayals of the war in Europe, such as Robert Stevenson's "Joan of Paris" and William Wyler's "Mrs. Miniver", the latter in which the inimitable Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon bolstered the moral imperative of continued U.S. involvement.

Fans of "Casablanca" (1942) will recognize the lovely Madeleine LeBeau in a supporting role. According to Wikipedia, LeBeau, along with her husband, Marcel Dalio, escaped from Paris in June, 1940, just ahead of the Nazi advance, eventually finding their way to the U.S. Fans of George Sanders will love his role as a heroic leader of the underground movement. But the stars of the film are Brenda Marshall and Philip Dorn. Some viewers may recall Marshall as the scientist Nora Goodrich in Anthony Mann's "Strange Impersonation" (1946). The Dutch-born Dorn was better known as an actor in Germany but who also moved to the U.S. with the war's outbreak. Director Leonide Moguy sought refuge in the States in a similar manner. He also directed the interesting noir, "Whistle Stop" (1946), with George Raft and Ava Gardner before returning to France. In short, this was a cast and company that appeared to know first-hand what they were portraying during one of the war's bleakest periods.

As of this writing, it is available as a Fox Cinema Archives release, and well worth tracking down, if only for the history lesson it movingly portrays.

A French doctor without a French accent

[marthawilcox1831 · 1/10 · 6 August 2014]

George Sanders plays a French doctor without a French accent. He plays Germans well and even speaks in a German accent, but he can't play a French doctor without sounding quintessentially English.

The young brother of the French protagonist, Jean, is quite bold and brave standing up for what he believes and speaking out against oppression. To be honest it;s the French characters that make this film work. Sanders merely lends his name to sell the film, but he contributes very little in terms of his performance.

I would advise Sanders fans to stay away from this film as it comes nowhere near the quality of 'Manhunt' or 'Tales of Manhattan'.

Remember his name! tell it to your children!

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 1 October 2016]

***SPOILERS*** Typical WWII Hollywood propaganda flick that makes the enemy Germans occupiers of the just defeated French nation-It was France that declared war on Germany not the other way around-look far better then the members of the French underground movement that's fighting them. We see the Frenchmen and women living in this little French town not at all abused by the German troops as long as they don't try to attack kill and sabotage them. In here we have former French POW Jean Blanchard played by, Dutch actor Philip Dorn, released from a German prison camp because he, suffering from acute tuberculosis, doesn't have long to live. Not wanting to get involved with the French underground movement Jean slowly joins it when he feels that it will exonerate him for being in the view of many fellow Frenchmen, because of his pacifist ideas, a coward and traitor to his country.

It's also Jean's wife Yvonne, Brenda Marshall, who gets him to see the light but not for the reasons that you would think. That in trying to win her over since she's involved with Dr. Andre Marbel, George Sanders, not romantically like Jean suspects but in that Dr. Marbel is a major leader in the French Underground movement by running an anti-German underground newspaper! There's also the hot headed young but a bit overconfident French teenager Georges Benoit played by Raymond Roe who despite his prominent role in the movie is not even mentioned in the films credits! It's Georges who acts and looks so American instead of French that he both looks and acts like he just stepped out of an "Andy Hardy" movie. Trying to join up with the French underground Georges and those yo-yo's with him screw themselves up even before they get a chance to shoot off their guns getting caught red-handed by the German gestapo and later executed for their failed efforts.

***SPOILERS*** It was in fact Yvonne who came out blasting by gunning down from her hospital window Nazi Colonel Pirosh,Robert Lewis, who order and did it himself young Georges to be executed! even though the person who shot Pirosh was right in front of them the deft and blind German Gestapo had no idea who his attacker was, the dirty rat did in fact survive, and thus ordered 50 innocent Frenchmen to be executed in retaliation. With the just recovered Col. Pirosh, who claimed that his death would be a great loss to humanity, going back on his word in not having them shot if he in fact survived and still ordering the French hostages to be gunned down our hero Jean who despite looking as strong as an ox decided to take the rap in him shooting Pirosh to save Yvonne, Who was ready to turn herself in, from being executed!

P.S I didn't quite see Jean's act as that heroic, as Dr. Marbel broadcast on the underground radio, since he knew he didn't have long to live anyway and in his suffering from a deadly and incurable disease by him being executed by the Gestapo would have only put him out of his misery -as well as the movie-anyway!

French resistance turned into a melodrama

[clanciai · 8/10 · 12 January 2022]

This is not a great war film, and today it is hopelessly outdated. The credits of the film is that the actors (almost all escaped from France during the occupation) act with absolute sincerity and conviction, giving the film a character of genuine honesty as an effort to communicate how life was in Paris for Parisians during the occupation. The documentary character is missing, however, being replaced by a rather uncouth sentimentality, as if it was contaminated by Hollywood, which it apparently was. It was made for the Americans to show them how hard life was in Europe for civilians under the German occupation, and the excellent acting by Philip Dorn, Brenda Marshall and George Sanders add to the credibility. So if you can forget the sentimental smear over it all, you will find it a most valuable and realistic account of life in the resistance. One warning: there are no human Germans here.

An Excellent Melodrama Showing French Resistance to Nazi Occupation

[jayraskin1 · 9/10 · 29 September 2015]

N.Y. Times critic,Bosley Crowther calls this "a stilted melodrama which is both graphically and emotionally dull." I found it stirring, uplifting and well done. The movie is romantic entertainment in the style of "Casablanca," with a similar anti-Nazi message. The Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid parts are played by George Sanders, Brenda Marshall and Philip Dorn. George Sanders is especially impressive. It is amazing how he can go so easily from a Nazi ("Man Hunt," 1941)to an anti-Nazi here. Marshall and Dorn are fine. Kid actor,Raymond Roe, stands out in the uncredited part of an heroic teenager named George.

Some reviewer on this site complained that Sanders didn't use a French accent, while all the other characters did. I don't think that is a real problem. Obviously, none of the characters would have been speaking English if the film was really taking place in France, but then American audiences would not have been able to understand the picture if they did that. I don't think Sanders adding a French accent would have added any realism to the movie. A movie audience accepts it as a convention that the dialogue is supposed to be taking place in French and that the producers are doing it in English so that the story can be understood by Americans. Accents are really optional and Sanders probably made a good choice not to affect one in a movie with many real French actors.

Anyways, the movie moves quickly, delivers a good deal of suspense and has a lot of nice and surprising twists and turns.