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FULL SYNOPSIS
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http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/86249/Paris-After-Dark/full-synopsis.html
Dr. Andre Marbel and his nurse, Yvonne Blanchard, are the secret leaders of a Parisian resistance group known as the Fighting French Committee. They work in a clinic attached to the large Beaumont Works factory, which used to manufacture cars but now produces military machinery for the occupying German Army. Their primary contacts are Collette, a café owner, and Max and Paul, who print anti-German leaflets on a small press hidden in Collette's cellar. One day, Yvonne and her mother, father Lucien and younger brother George are astonished by the return of Jean, Yvonne's husband, who has been incarcerated in a German prison camp for two-and-a-half years. Jean, a former factory worker and soldier, is seriously ill, but does not reveal the severity of his case to Yvonne. The family is distraught by the change in Jean, for he has become a beaten man, terrified of the Germans and no longer possessing the confidence he had before his imprisonment. Yvonne decides to keep her resistance work secret from Jean, and as the days pass, he misinterprets her relationship with Marbel. A crisis arises when Marbel learns from Col. Pirosh, the leader of the local German forces, that Jean and other sick prisoners were released as an exchange for the five hundred Frenchmen who the army intends to send to Germany as laborers. When Marbel holds an emergency meeting to discuss the situation, Jean follows Yvonne to his home and assumes that she is having an affair with him. George, who is to be sent to Germany, is infuriated by Jean's defeatist attitude and decides to run away and join Charles de Gaulle's fighting forces. Despondent over his family's seeming rejection, Jean goes to the café, where he tells Michel the barber of George's plans. Michel informs Pirosh, who orders George and his friends apprehended. Later, the young men, who have been badly beaten, are taken to a demonstration at the factory, where the workers are celebrating the Allied landing at Algiers. When George urges his friends to keep fighting, Pirosh shoots and kills him, and Yvonne, who is watching from a clinic window, shoots Pirosh. The colonel is only wounded, however, and Marbel is forced to operate on him in order to save the fifty hostages taken by the Germans in reprisal.Meanwhile, Jean realizes that Michel betrayed George and strangles him, after which Collette tells him the truth about Yvonne and Marbel's involvement with the resistance. Jean then finds Yvonne and, after apologizing for his earlier accusations, comforts her as she grieves for her brother. He takes the pistol with which she shot Pirosh, who has recovered from the surgery and ordered that the hostages be killed if the sniper does not surrender. Yvonne intends to give herself up and goes to Marbel's house, where she learns that Jean has already turned himself in. Yvonne is crushed, but Marbel tells her that Jean is terminally ill and wishes for her to fight on while he makes the only sacrifice for the resistance that he can. Yvonne then makes a shortwave radio broadcast inciting her countrymen to continue their struggle, and in Pirosh's office, Jean listens as she declares her undying love for him.NOTES
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The working titles of this film were Paris, France, Paris Underground,French Underground and The Night Is Ending. According to a September 1, 1942 Hollywood Reporter news item, Lee Marcus was originally set to produce the picture, which was to be directed by Robert Florey, while a November 26, 1942 Los Angeles Times news item reported that Annabella was to have the starring role. The news item also stated that the film would be about "events in a subway in Paris during the war." A 14 April 43 Los Angeles Examiner news item noted that the lead was originally intended for Maureen O'Hara, but would be played by Brenda Marshall. Philip Dorn was borrowed from M-G-M for the production. The CBCS lists Marcel Dalio's character as "Luigi." Paris After Dark was the first American picture worked on by Russian director Leonide Moguy, who had been working in Paris before the German occupation.
ORIGINAL PRINT INFORMATION
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| Release Date: | Oct 15, 1943 |
| Premiere Information: | not available |
| Production Dates: | 10 May--mid-Jun 1943 |
| Color: | Black and White |
| Sound: | Mono (Western Electric Sound System) |
| Duration (in mins): | 85 |
| Duration (in feet): | 7, 734 |
| Duration (in reels): | 9 |
| Production Companies: | Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. |
| Distribution Companies: | Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. |
| Country: | United States |
MOVIE REVIEW
THE SCREEN; In Darkest France
The terrible tragedy of the French people under Nazi-occupation rule is suggested in terms which are sensible but is not realized dramatically in Twentieth Century-Fox's new picture, "Paris After Dark," which came to the Rialto yesterday. Somewhere in the boiling a good idea went astray. Perhaps too many conventions of melodrama obstructed it. And perhaps the producers were too eager to give Brenda Marshall something to do. Anyhow what should have been a fine film about the regeneration of a French soldier — a soldier returned to his homeland from a Nazi prison full of sickness and defeat—turns out to be a stilted melodrama which is both graphically and emotionally dull.
If the writer and director had been more searching in their study of this soldier (Philip Dorn), if they had followed his development more closely and not gone bouncing away to focus attention on the workings of his wife (Brenda Marshall) and a doctor (George Sanders) in the French "underground," they might have emerged with a picture that caught the tragedy and glory of France as none yet has. Mr. Dorn, within the limits of his opportunities, reveals a sensitivity for the role. But the emphasis upon Miss Marshall's despairs, which are not too convincingly conveyed, and the routine of "underground" activity draw most of the play away from him.
In the roles of a French "stoolpigeon" and a Nazi colonel, respectively, Marcel Dalio and Robert Lewis catch some interesting glints of character. But the remainder of the cast is exceptionally stodgy and notably ul-French. In this his first Hollywod picture, Leonide Moguy has directed in true B-style.In Darkest France
PARIS AFTER DARK; screen play by Harold Buchman; based on a story by Georges Kessel; directed by Leonide Moguy; produced by Andre Daven for Twentieth Century-Fox. At the Rialto. Dr. Andre Marbel . . . . . George Sanders
Jean Blanchard . . . . . Philip Dorn
Yvonne Blanchard . . . . . Brenda Marshall
Collette . . . . . Madeleine LeBeau
Michel . . . . . Marcel Dalio
Colonel Pirosh . . . . . Robert Lewis
Captain Franck . . . . . Henry Rowland
George Benoit . . . . . Raymond Roe
Victor Durand . . . . . Gene Gary
Papa Benoit . . . . . Jean Del Val
Max . . . . . Curt Bois
Medame Benoit . . . . . Ann Codee
Picard . . . . . Louis Borell
Mannheim . . . . . John Wengraf
Paul . . . . . Michael Visaroff
Nazi Agent . . . . . Frank Lyon
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