Martin Bradley Crawford is excellent as a rich French bitch who discovers her patriotism and a slightly softer side to her character when Hitler invades France. John Wayne is the American flyer she gets involved with. The movie is "Reunion in France", a very early Jules Dassin, and it's a good one even if it does fall short of classic status. The plot involves Crawford's suspicions that her fiancée Philip Dorn is a Nazi collaborator, while at the same time helping Wayne escape from the Gestapo and Dassin rings a good deal of suspense from it. The first-rate supporting cast includes John Carradine, Albert Basserman, Henry Daniel, Reginald Owen and in a small and uncredited part of a salesgirl, an up-and-coming starlet called Ava Gardener.

mark.waltz Sliding down to the end of her MGM years (18 of them!), Joan Crawford got tossed into Hollywood's propaganda machine with this World War II drama about how the invasion of Paris changed the course of its history. Joan seems about as French as I do, speaking French (in English...) as if it were Cary Grant trying to imitate Chevalier or Boyer. Crawford's real-life soon to be husband Philip Dorn plays her French lover who ends up on the side of the Nazis, shocking the anti-Nazi Crawford. Future blacklistee Howard da Silva is ironically cast as one of the Nazi's. Many decades later, he would play MGM's boss Louis B. Mayer opposite Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford in the notorious "Mommie Dearest". Since Martin Kosleck, Conrad Veidt and George Sanders were unavailable (their Nazi uniforms from other films obviously at the cleaners), John Carradine stepped in, his uniform from other similar films fresh and sparkling.An amusing scene in a fine French dress shop has the portly or otherwise plain German women being nasty or trying to fit into things two sizes too small for them. One of the more glamorous of them is played by the future Lovey Howell of "Gilligan's Island" fame, Natalie Schafer, who has a wonderfully bitchy scene demanding a coat in the shop that Crawford is utilizing to transfer money to the Allies in. John Wayne pops up towards the middle of the film as an American soldier Crawford helps, but Wayne fans will be disappointed by how little screen time he gets. There are all sorts of divided loyalties and counter espionage agents so it is sometimes hard to keep track of who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. MGM perennial Reginald Owen is also present in one of his several hundred films made there.While this will never be considered on par with "Casablanca" or "For Whom the Bell Tolls" as a classic example of the golden age of Hollywood's propaganda machine, it is amusing. Particularly funny is a short sequence of a black singer singing "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" to oblivious Germans, smiling stupidly as he insults them and their fuhrer. A montage of Joan walking through Paris after the Nazi's have invaded seems silly, especially since it is obvious that she is going the opposite way than anybody else.

Neil Doyle Wearing a stunning array of gowns by Irene and photographed with glossy MGM care, Joan Crawford is a French woman (with a cultured American accent) who doesn't think France has to worry about the occupation of her country by Hitler's Nazis until they take over her home while she's vacationing elsewhere.With the reality of war, comes the realization that her husband (Philip Dorn) might be collaborating with the Nazis. She loves him dearly but is beginning to despise his affiliation with so many Nazi friends. Then along comes an American pilot (John Wayne), whom she hides in her apartment until she can get him safely out of the country. That's the set-up in this basically suspenseful melodrama which, while unconvincing and full of twists and turns in the plot, is played by a competent team of actors, all of varying accents, who keep the story moving toward a not too surprising climax.Among the good supporting players are Reginald Owen, Albert Basserman, Natalie Schaefer, John Carradine, Howard DaSilva, Henry Daniell and J. Edward Bromberg.And yet, the whole film has the air of a minor B-film despite such extravagant settings and Crawford's never-ending wardrobe changes. It also has the air of artificiality which works against sustaining the sort of suspenseful atmosphere it seeks to gain throughout.Philip Dorn rates special mention as Joan's true love. He gives a colorful, nuanced performance that is interesting to watch.

nycritic If Joan Crawford had hopes of reviving her career at MGM following the successes of THE WOMEN and A WOMAN'S FACE, she was disillusioned once again and it shows in this badly produced Hollywood melodrama posing as a war film with its "patriotism" message. It's probably not her fault that she was being given such poor material - or better yet, material more suited for any of the given rising starlets of her time - it was clear that MGM wanted her out; Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo had reaped the benefits of the better scripts the previous decade and had retired, and actresses such as Greer Garson were on the rapid rise and literally forcing her out, and at thirty-eight, the Adrian seams were coming apart leaving her basically naked for the savaging. But, professional as she reportedly was, she made this film about a Frenchwoman (with an American accent and fabulous dresses) coming to terms with her own patriotism once Nazi Germany invades Paris. It's just too bad that nowhere is there really an "antiwar sentiment" throughout the film, full of stock footage, bad editing, and fluff; if anything, the duplicity of her leading man (Phillip Dorn) as he portrays a collaborator to the Nazi's (but then it's revealed he's working covert, probably to add to the suspense) and then the appearance of John Wayne, of all people, playing an American aviator, was only for the sake of playing the worn out love triangle her films endlessly presented, and by the time this movie came around, it was basically over. One more film, ABOVE SUSPICION, would have her cancel out her contract to MGM and begin her Warner Bros. phase, which would be more productive.