Act of Love

A low-key film with a fine cast. Unfortunately, it's so low-key as to seem nearly aimless for the first half. The pace and interest do pick up, however, toward the end.

As World war II grinds slowly to a halt in Europe, an innocent French girl on the brink of prostitution and a cynical but lonely GI fall in love in the City of Lights - where, due to the war, the lights don't always work, A flaw, at least as the film plays on television, is that the French accents are sometimes hard to understand. And there are plenty of them.

Though ten years too old for the role, not unusual for actors in war movies before the '70s, Douglas turns in a solid performance as Pfc. Teller, the wounded American soldier now stationed at an army headquarters in Paris. But it is the lovely Dany Robin, rarely seen in America, who deserves most of the acting credit for keeping the rather unfocused story interesting. Fernand Ledoux is adequately brooding and resentful. The eighteen-year-old Brigitte Bardot is already beautiful, but look sharp or you may miss her.

The real scene-stealer here, though, is the slinky Barbara Laage, who shows herself to be a fine actress in very nearly her only American film. Too bad she breezes out of the picture a third of the way through.

The on-location shots of Paris are also a plus in a film that sometimes flirts dangerously with soap opera. Not a classic or even a forgotten classic, but worth your time if bittersweet love is your cup of tea.

Although a co-production ,although it has a French title and features plenty of French luminaries,the film fell into oblivion in France.It's barely mentioned in the dictionaries of movies .

It was Anatole Litvak's return to France,where he had made some of his thirties movies ("L'Equipage" ,definitely a movie to rediscover, "Mayerling" the remake of which was filmed by Terence Young in 1968 or "Coeur de Lilas").But although I expected much of this film,I must admit I was disappointed.Particularly after watching his absorbing "decision before dawn" ,the movie he made just before "Un Acte d'Amour" The main problem is language:it's not very smart to make the French speak English between them.It's not a problem for a foreign audience,but for the French one it is one: Dany Robin and Serge Reggiani speaking English together is downright embarrassing.Not that their English is bad,but it is impossible to believe in THAT Paris,where almost everybody ,from a humble waitress to the hookers,speaks fluent English .And why didn't Litvak use Douglas' linguistic abilities?I once saw an interview during the Festival de Cannes and his French was quite good.

The French outnumber their American co-stars:Fernand Ledoux,Gabrielle Dorziat (whom Litvak had already directed in 'Mayerling" where she was miscast as Elizabeth "Sissi" from Austria),Dany Robin (who would be part of Hitchcock's "Topaz") ,the highly superior Reggiani (whose English delivery is much faster than when he speaks French: one should note he never says a single word in his first language,which is unlikely),and Brigitte Bardot (wearing braids) who appears in two short sequences as a waitress .

The best of this mushy story (the scene in the prison with a ridiculous voice over takes the biscuit when the young pure heroine winds up in the lions den (that is to say a cell with prostitutes)takes place in the prologue and in the epilogue :Douglas comes back to a place his love was happy when she was sixteen on the Cote d'Azur and he remembers her words .The meeting with his former superior and his wife,the room where the soldier feels nostalgic for a time that never was ,all this has Sirk accents and makes me feel the movie could have easily been boiled down into a good short.

More than any other movie I've seen, this one draws a dark picture of what the statistical enormity and bureaucratic obscenity of WWII did to individuals during (and after) the Second World War. This is a love story set against the new way of dealing with the logistics of millions of people on the move in wartime Europe -- on either side. The big point is that it's difficult to draw a line between the sides in the brutal impersonality of the events that crush people like the characters in this story.

Kirk Douglas is great, of course, and the direction in the film is always intersting. Hard to believe this was made as late as 53.

See this if you can -- I saw it on TCM recently in a Kirk Douglas festival. For that matter, watch all the Kirk Douglas flicks you can -- the guy had either great taste or great luck.

I just saw "An Act of Love" on cable television and I was amazed at the high production values of this film. Kirk Douglas has never given a bad performance in any film and here he has just the right touch as an actor. The story was mesmerizing and the ending was as sad and moving as any film that I have ever seen. I hope against hope that someday I can purchase this film on video or on DVD.

Many things about this movie are charming and have a wistful quality that brings you into its story.

First of all, and I offer my apologies to the absorbing performances, to me the most fascinating aspect of this film is the location; PARIS. But not just any Paris. This is a during and post-WWII Paris. Although released an amazing 8 years after the end of the war, much of the charm of a Paris which lingers in our hearts is still there. This is not travelogue picture with dancing Americans to a Rodgers score. There is a very true-to-life depiction of, what I call, the most elegant city in the world.

This movie tempts us to fall in love again with Paris. All politics aside, please. We see a Paris which many a serviceman or woman probably fell in love with during the war. We see the sights in and around Paris, there are some views of Fontainebleau just outside of the city which make me want to go back and suffer the awful Summer heat inside of it again just to see the gorgeous architecture there.

Second, I liked this story because it ran true. It has few Hollywood formulas -- even to the end it tempts us to see stories like these as they really were. Some happy, some not so. Another reviewer complained about "pidgin French - English" which was heard throughout the movie. I must say that whatever it was, it did not offend my ears and I have friends who live in Paris and have similar accents when they speak English. The accents did bother me -- and neither did the French without subtitles. I do remember a time when Americans knew more about the French language and were proud of it. I still am.

Yet, all through this we have a love story which develops and then unravels due to bureaucratic entanglements.

Finally, if you must see this for one reason, see it for the story and the deft performances. Kirk Douglas, it seems, never made a bad picture - or at least he never gave a bad performance. Every one was absorbing - brought you in, gave you permission to involve yourself with the situations in them. This is not exception. It is a low-key performance, true. But it is no less absorbing than anything he ever did.

Of course there was gorgeous Dany Robin as Kirk Douglas's love interest. Her portrayal of a shy, innocent French girl was perfect considering she was voted "nastiest French actress" that same year. She had a fabulous French career and worked with many famous directors, including Litvak, who also directed "Sorry, Wrong Number", "The Snake Pit" and "Anastasia".

I recommend this to those viewers who still have a little romance in their hearts - but walk with a dose of reality down every turn of their adventures.