Innocents in Paris

Unconvincing portmanteau comedy. Sim & Rutherford once again spin gold out of garbage, while the rest of the cast, notably Jimmy Edwards & Ronald Shiner, are defeated by a badly written screenplay. The Scotsman section, with James Copeland, is a good example of a poor performance meeting an inadequate script to produce unmistakable rubbish. Watching these innocents is not bliss!

After the war, France was a mess — an agricultural economy with a bad reputation world- wide because of near universal collaboration with the Nazis. America resolved to rebuild Europe and part of the plan was to cast Paris as a romantic place, in spite of its history. Hard to believe today, but Paris is wholly a cinematic invention.

The instruction went out to US and UK studios. The US studios went along to protect valuable monopolies, already eroding. UK studios required a subsidy. Many famous and important films followed.

This is one of the subsidized UK films. (Included in the story is a joke about the safety of air travel. The first British airliner was a disaster, with many crashes.)

Several Londoners visit Paris for the weekend and have their lives changed by the romanticism of the place and people. As with most subsidized films, including many French films to this day, it stinks.

The story is broken into five threads: a statesman, Scotsman, young pretty woman, old bat, and marine in a marching band.

The young woman is Claire Bloom when she was pretty. But the only thread that has any charm at all is the one that follows Margaret Rutherford and her always present husband, Stringer Davis. She's unique, inventing a character that has become a stereotype.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

A fun little adventure with Alastair Sim on form as usual (always watch Sim closely to get the best from his performances). Margaret Rutherford is her usual dippy, wonderful self and a host of other fifties household British names pop up (including Christopher Lee), in this easy to watch little adventure.

Fifty plus years on, it doesn't really matter what the political motivations of the film were, it's an entertaining little story with a beginning, middle and an end.

There's a lot of dross been made since 1953 and this film by no means takes a back seat. Sit back and enjoy.

I saw this on tv years ago but watched it today via new blu ray.

It is good fun and of interest in how it tells its story.

Even for 1953 it is cosy and unrealistic,I did not expect anything else.

But it has a lot of location filming in Paris and it looks great.

As someone obsessed with aviation history I expect they did provide meals on flights to Paris in this period.

Flying was for richer people then and this was before the jet age,the flight would have been longer than it is nowadays.

Passengers would expect food and drink on nearly all flights..

One of the reviews here made me scratch my head.

France famous for poor food produce? Really?

British airliners always crashing? Well we know about the Comet but Britain had a mighty aviation industry in the 1950s.

The French talk about the 30 glorious years of growth and prosperity after WW2.

I never found out exactly which years? 1945-1975? 1948-1978? In any case France recovered from world war 2 thanks to the Marshall plan but also to the hard work of its citizens and due to having an economic plan.

Half a dozen British subjects board a plane for a weekend flight to France and find themselves innocents in Paris. It's one of those movies in which several individual stories take place at a common venue, here with a mostly humorous theme. With a couple of comedy pros like Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford headlining the cast, Claire Bloom (fresh from her role in Chaplin's LIMELIGHT and James Copeland in more romantic plots and lesser stars to fill in the gaps, there's something for everyone.

It's a thoroughly pleasant effort with a script by Anatole de Grunewald and enough actual French talent to lend the necessary Gallic charm to the proceedings. Sim and Rutherford are, as always, delights, and the rest are amusing in their standard stories, although I can understand why the 100-minute movie is usually cut; although the subplot with Laurence Harvey as a French valet de chambre is good, the movie, as a whole, seemed to drag a bit.