Assignment – Paris ** (1952, Dana Andrews, Märta Torén, George Sanders, Audrey Totter) – Classic Movie Review 11,240

Yes it is Assignment Paris but Destination Budapest. And assignment Robert Parrish, who conscientiously directs Dana Andrews as Jimmy Race, a US Paris-based New York Herald Tribune reporter sent by his editor behind the Iron Curtain to investigate a meeting involving the Hungarian ambassador but then framed and arrested as a spy in Budapest with incriminating microfilm. There is time in the gaps between tense scenes to join Andrews in trying to work out the Cold War plot.

The 1952 Columbia Pictures black and white American Cold War film noir Assignment – Paris comes complete with George Sanders as Andrews’s editor Nicholas Strang, Marta Toren as Jeanne Moray and Audrey Totter as the fashion editor Sandy Tate. It is an intriguing story, there is a good cast, and the location filming in Paris and Budapest helps to lift it out of the rut.

Burnett Guffey and Ray Cory shoot in black and white. It is also shot at Columbia/ Sunset Gower Studios, 1438 N. Gower Street, Hollywood.

William Bowers’s screenplay is based on Paul Gallico and Pauline Gallico’s novel Trial by Terror, which seems far-fetched as told here, but is based on a real-life tale. The short runtime of 85 minutes also helps.

Also in the cast are Sandro Giglio as Gabor Czeki alias Grisha, Donald Randolph as Anton Borvich, Herbert Berghof as Prime Minister Andreas Ordy, Ben Astar as Minister of Justice Vajos, Willis Bouchey as Editor Biddle, Earl Lee as Dad Pelham, Maurice Doner, Leon Askin, Paul Hoffman, Jay Adler, and Peter Votrian.

Original director Phil Karlson was fired during filming.

Italian title: Destinazione Budapest.

It is the last American film of Stockholm-born Märta Torén, who left the US for Italy after accusations of communism against her screenwriter husband Leonardo Bercovici. She also wanted to raise her future child away from America and wanted better roles than Hollywood offered. Torén appeared in 11 American films, including Sirocco (1951), but died from a cerebral haemorrhage aged 31 on 19 February 1957.

Dana Andrews also starred in the similar Berlin Correspondent (1942) and Andrews and Torén also starred together in another Cold War thriller, Sword in the Desert (1949).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,240

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