Bedevilled

Mitchell Leisen directs "Bedevilled," a 1955 film starring Steve Forrest and Anne Baxter. Forrest plays Greg, who is en route to a seminary in order to study for the priesthood.

On the plane to Paris, where they will spend a few days before proceeding to the seminary, his fellow traveler becomes ill. This leaves Greg free to see Paris on his own. Just his luck, he runs into a cabaret singer, Monica (a blond Anne Baxter) who has a major problem. She witnessed a murder and now some thugs of a very important man, Trevelle (Maurice Teynac) are after her. She won't go to the police; it's her word against Trevelle, and with his power, he'll be believed.

This movie is supposed to ask the question, will Greg decide the priesthood isn't for him, but I am just guessing. I didn't get this dilemma from Steve Forrest, not one of my favorite actors. He was a good-looking man and stalwart, but he had no chemistry with Baxter, and frankly, he just wasn't much of an actor. I'm prejudiced, having seen him in "Hollywood Wives" in the '80s, an unfortunately unforgettable experience.

So while Greg walks around with a serious look on his face and tries to help Monica, Monica is pretty close to hysterics when she's not trying to figure out what Greg's story is. For some reason, priests and nuns who wear plain clothes in movies never want to tell anyone what they do -- or in this case, intend to do -- for a living.

The end of this film made no sense regarding the motives of one character. Bad script.

If you can ignore the very melodramatic music, the photography (this was done in color) is gorgeous, and the film was actually made in Paris. Toward the end of the film, there is a wonderful segment as the two main characters go onto the roof of a building at night.

Not much to recommend it, but if you like films set in Paris, you might want to check it out.

The suspense in Bedevilled turns out to be whether Steve Forrest will break the vow of celibacy he hasn't yet taken. (Maybe he was following in the footsteps of his brother Dana Andrews, who played a priest in Edge of Doom.) As an American off to Rome to study for Holy Orders, Forrest gets three days to kill in Paris. When his buddy Robert Christopher, nauseous after their bumpy transatlantic flight, takes to bed, Forrest decides to explore the city on his own. But, like nuns, those seminarians travel in pairs for good reason: They might run smack into Anne Baxter.

Forrest's attempts at cool politeness seem wasted on the mercurial Baxter, who either clings to him for comfort or tells him to clear out of her life ('I don't know you from AC/DC,' she snaps at one point). When the police show up at the Elephant Blanc, a cabaret where she sings, she names Forrest as her alibi for the past several hours, even though they've just met. She tells him she just witnessed a murder and may soon wind up a victim herself. When some thugs start following her, Forrest helps her hide out until she can flee the country (no easy task, since her passport has been stolen).

Meanwhile, Forrest is seriously A.W.O.L. from his vocation. When Christopher, hunting the fleshpots of Paris, locates him in a garret in the slums, he offers his help. But Forrest, operating under the constraints of Hollywood's thick-headed male code, rebuffs him. He rebuffs Baxter, too, whose feelings for him have started to stir. (Why won't he tell her of his vocation? Is he ashamed?) Finally, after a chase over rooftops and up and down countless steps, Baxter and Forrest take refuge in a church. There, humbled in the presence of the Absolute, she starts to reveal a little more of her story....

If there was a good way out of the plot she welded together, scriptwriter Jo Eisinger didn't find it. (Her career started strongly, with benchmark noirs like Gilda and Night and the City, but petered out into the sentimental and far-fetched - The System, Crime of Passion.) The suspense mechanisms of Baxter's plight stay sketched in only roughly, while Forrest's drab dilemma (theology versus biology) takes top priority; that a woman's life is at stake seems less momentous than whether he might succumb to temptation. The ending satisfactorily resolves neither character's problem. Bedevilled closes on a chord of attempted uplift that strikes a gratingly sour note.

As a golden age movie fan I was curious as soon as I saw the listing for this film. It seemed bewildering that I could be unfamiliar with an MGM film from the 50's starring Miss Anne Baxter in Technicolor, set in Paris and directed by the legendary Mitchell Leisen?

Well now I know how. What's bewildering is that a film with those advantages could turn out like this. While visually beautiful this is a flatfooted, turgidly paced suspense film missing the suspense. A very blonde Anne tries to breath life into this but she seems edgy and a bit lost. However like everybody else in this her character is poorly defined. In addition she has the titanic task of acting opposite Steve Forrest, never the most facile of actors, who is beyond wooden in the lead. In no way does he suggest any sort of spirituality or a sense of real conflict with the decisions before him.

He can be blamed somewhat for the failure of the movie but the two main culprits are the nonsensical script and Leisen. Usually able to turn out either saucy concoctions like The Mating Season, Midnight and Kitty or solid dramas along the lines of Hold Back the Dawn and Swing High, Swing Low he is off his game here on how to turn this dull lump of coal into something resembling entertainment.

The film is beautiful to look at, taking advantage of its location shooting with breathtaking views of Paris. Pretty pictures however are not enough to make an entertaining movie. The film is not painfully bad but it is a mediocre effort at best.

Bedevilled is an unusual but dull tale of intrigue in post-war Paris. Anne Baxter and Steve Forrest are completely unable to set off any romantic sparks, and Jo Eisinger's screenplay does them no favors. That's a shame, really, because the setup--newly ordained priest confronts temptation in the City of Lights--holds potential interest. Are there any reasons to watch this Cinemascope trifle? Well, not really, unless you enjoy first class cinematography. Shot on location by the great British DoP, Freddie Young (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago), the film looks positively stunning. Young was one of the early masters of the widescreen process, and he takes full advantage of the Panavision lens here. Even more remarkably, he managed to get good results from Eastmancolor stock. Turn down the sound and enjoy.

Actor Steve Forrest is a young good looking man named Gregory Fitzgerald who has flown to Paris France with another seminarian named Tony Lugacetti (Robert Christopher) as a stop over for a few days before starting their intense priesthood formal training. While travelling by cab to meet up with another priest for dinner a mysterious woman frantically jumps into his cab and begs Gregory to allow her to share his cab with her to escape someone who is chasing her. The young seminarian Gregory is intrigued but more earnestly just wants to help this pretty damsel whose distress is visible all over her worried face and in her nervous mannerisms.

Gradually we find out that the woman in distress is a cabaret singer named Monica Johnson (Anne Baxter) and she is trying to flee the country to avoid being murdered herself by a very wealthy and prominent French tycoon.

Other reviewers have said there was no chemistry between actors Steve Forrest and Anne Baxter but you have to appreciate that Steve Forrest was playing a seminarian who pledges himself to God and to refuse any sexual offers of any kind even if it means saying no to the sultry blonde and vivacious Anne Baxter.

As this mystery unfolds most men and women would be disappointed with the ending which I will not spoil for those still interested in seeing it for themselves. Suffice to say I thoroughly enjoyed this suspense/thriller/mystery and I also felt that both Steve Forrest and Anne Baxter were exceptional in their respective roles.

I give Bedevilled an excellent 8 out of 10 IMDB rating.