Robert J. Maxwell The women in this lackadaisical mystery are Genevieve Page and Ingrid Thulin, two perfect noses, as if designed by a sculptor of exquisite taste or by a cartoonist suffering from OCD. Cripes they are two good-looking babes. Page is French and she seemed to look more ravishing with the passing years. Catch her some twenty years later in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes." Thulin, a Swedish ung flicka, was part of Ingmar Bergman's company. She was as somber with him as she is cheerful here. Her voice with its Nordic overtones is a treat to listen to. Some syllables sound like those gracefully arching bridges held up by spiderwebs look.Both of these women fling themselves at the trench-coated Robert Mitchum, Page as casually as she might use a Kleenex and Thulin, later, with more serious intent, although she's known Mitchum for less than a day. I know this is hard to believe but things like this do happen. Just the other day a beautiful Swedish blond in the supermarket glanced at me and swooned with delight. Pheromones, I guess.Actually, I don't know what the hell Mitchum is looking for in this vertiginous plot. He's been a full-time press agent for an uber-rich philanthropist in France. The old fellow drops dead and all sorts of mysterious figures approach Mitchum, asking if the departed uttered any last words. Mitchum devotes the rest of the film to finding out what this character was up to. Something to do with blackmail. The search takes him from the Riviera to Germany and Sweden. Along the way he bumps into more mysterious oddballs, stumbles across a murder, and so on -- very noirish. But I don't know why he involved himself in this mystery in the first place or who is paying him for doing it.But despite the trappings and the central figure, it's not really a classsical noir film. It's in color, nobody carries a gun, everyone is too neatly dressed and groomed, the air doesn't reek of desperation. The ladies are gloriously made up. The musical score is an over-ripe symphony that sometimes complements the events on screen and more often draws attention to itself. Mitchum, with his bulk and stature, is a commanding presence but he isn't a tough guy here, not a cynical brute, and nothing in his dialog -- or anybody else's -- is worth remembering. The direction is straightforward, functional, and a little leaden. And, alas, the ending solves nothing but paves the way for a sequel or a television series.

Alonzo Church Robert Mitchum, employee of a mysterious rich guy with a mysterious source of income, gets involved in FOREIGN INTRIGUE when he seeks out the source of his newly dead employer's seven figure lifestyle on the Riviera. Will the natural scenery of the Riviera, Sweeden and Vienna overwhelm the scenery provided by Bob's bodacious costars? This is an entertaining enough movie -- and would have been a lot better without the atrocious musical score -- but it is slumming for Mitchum, who probably took the role for the free visits to European hotspots. The main interest IS Mitchum, who acts the role in an interesting fashion. By acting, in each scene, that he just can't quite believe the mother lode of BS that he has just been handed by some suspect, spy type, cute girl, or plot development, he sort of steps aside from the move, and whispers to us that he knows this is all nonsense, but bear with him, the movie won't be too bad. And, because he does that, it really isn't.Now, frankly, this is a dead-end as an acting approach, and the cul-de-sac at the end is Roger Moore at the close of his James Bond period. But it works for this movie and this actor, where a straighter approach probably just would have failed. We should be grateful, though, that a sequel, suggested by the ending, was not produced.

kuciak I first saw this film as a young boy, and then for years it could not be seen on television, or for that mater anywhere else. I saw the film for the last time in the early 70's, until it was released again early again in this century.Others have gone into the plot of this film, and I will not do that. What is interesting for me is that the plot of the story is interesting, and it has one of the most unusual ending of any film made in the 1950's. Also while some have criticized Mitchums performance and if he is walking through this film, I think he plays it just right, a man of cool. Ela Fitzgerald once commented that she liked the way Mitchum walked. During the open sequence we see him, I am sure she is referring to this film. Watching him, you realize that if the opportunity had come, and he had wanted to, he could have been the American equivalent to James Bond. Perhaps he could have played the character that Dean Martin would play of Matt Helm, and in films that would have been more in keeping with the books. He really carries this film. His performance reminds me a little of the character he played in OUT OF THE PAST, a wiser Jeff Bailey perhaps.I see parallels with MR. ARKADIN and THE THIRD MAN, it really tries to be the latter, though does not succeed. It does have the classic look of the film noir, darkness with light shinning through certain areas of the frame, unusual for a color film of the time, and can be quite enjoyable to watch. Also the traces of the Noir film come immediately through when he informs his employers sexy young wife that she now has to become the grieving widow.Eastman color, while cheaper than the original Technicolor, does have a tendency to fade over time. When I first saw this film in color, it was rather gorgeous to look at. Perhaps the comment about the horrible Eastman color is due to the fading of these prints.If you liked Robert Mitchum in other films, I highly recommend this film just to see him. Without him the film would not be worth seeing at all.

LCShackley In order to review this movie, you need to put yourself back into the 50s when it was made. WW2 was just a decade before (closer than Desert Storm is to us), and the cold war was raging. Tales of spies, traitors, and exotic locations were just the ticket for mid-50s audiences. FOREIGN INTRIGUE has plenty of interesting turns and surprises, but it seems to be trying too hard to mix THIRD MAN with MR ARKADIN and perhaps a bit of WW2 Hitchcock (Sabotage, Foreign Correspondent?). I'm not a big Mitchum fan, but he gives his usual looming, low-key performance, and the supporting players do well. My real reason for watching this film (and I've been waiting over 30 years to catch it) is to see Frederick O'Brady, who plays the heavy (he was reviewed at the time as "out-Lorrying Peter Lorre."). He was my French teacher in 1973-74 at the Eastman School of Music and a great raconteur. He had enormous talent in music, languages, writing, and of course acting (having worked with Orson Welles in ARKADIN, plus Jean Renoir, Roger Vadim, and others). If you can find his autobiography ALL TOLD, you'll be fascinated. He told us that Mitchum tried to teach him to drive during the making of this movie, resulting in a wrecked car. Some thought this would be O'Brady's ticket to Hollywood, but instead French directors dropped him, assuming he would be asking too much money for "lowly" French pictures. He spent many years on stage and never had another juicy film part like "Spring" in this picture. If you enjoy the spy genre and aren't in a big hurry for lots of blazing action, find this movie!