Paris After Dark
Director: Leonide Moguy
Year: 1943
Rating: 7.0
Clearly influenced by the success of Casablanca a year earlier, this story
of the French resistance in Paris has all the nationalistic patriotic fervor
that one could hope for - or dread I suppose - but no matter how many other
villains come along from Communists to Terrorists, the Nazis are still the
easiest to hate. So the patriotic speeches went down fine with me. And it
is always good to see George Sanders as one of the good guys - he played
the rotter so often. Here he is the leader of the Underground. As in Casablanca,
the cast's story are as interesting as the film - the barber played by Marcel
Dalio and Colette played by Madeleine LeBeau were real life husband and wife
and both escaped France right before Paris was taken by the Germans. They
were also in Casablanca. Philip Dorn who plays the Frenchman released from
prison is actually Dutch and he too escaped from Holland as the Germans were
headed his way. There are in fact a number of French actors playing roles
in this film and I would guess many of them were refugees from Europe.