Dana Andrews is one
of my film noir favorites. He gets top billing in Assignment-Paris, and
I looked forward to seeing him. I wasn’t disappointed. As newspaper reporter
Jimmy Race, Andrews is brash and bold, probably things that earned Americans a
not-so-great reputation around the world after World War II. Reporter Jimmy
Race is a familiar American archetype, and the character should be a familiar
one to U.S. audiences. The narrative is set firmly in the Cold War between the
United States and the Soviet Union in the immediate postwar period. It is
almost a history lesson as well as a fictional story.
Assignment-Paris is available for free online. Click here to
see it at the Internet Archive.
The
narrative begins with a street-level shot outside the New York Herald
Tribune offices in Paris, France. A voice-over narrator explains to viewers
that the newspaper’s offices are connected by direct wire to all the major
capitals on the European continent, which in 1952 included countries in Western
and Eastern Europe. The narrator also says, “Into these offices early last year
came a phone call that made the most shocking headlines of the day. This is the
story of the man who tried to break through an iron wall of censorship to the
facts behind that headline.” The “iron wall” is a reference to the Iron
Curtain, which separated West from East during the Cold War.
Getting
accurate news out of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries was
difficult if not impossible during the Cold War. Censorship was common. The
scenes in the film showing the reports and broadcasts of Western foreign
correspondents working behind the Iron Curtain being monitored in real time
were based on fact. This important point is evident in the film’s narrative
from the beginning.
Newspaper
reporter Barker at the Herald Tribune’s Budapest office calls the office
in Paris to announce that American Robert Anderson’s trial in Hungary is
complete and that Anderson has been found guilty of spying on the Hungarian
government. Barker also reports that Anderson confessed, of his own free will,
to being a spy and to working for the U.S. government. Nicholas Strang, the
editor in chief at the Paris office, is highly skeptical that Anderson spoke of
his own free will at this trial. He knows how countries behind the Iron Curtain
operate, and he is sure that Anderson is not guilty of anything.
Nicholas
Strang wants Jeanne Moray, also a Herald Tribune reporter, to go to the
Hungarian embassy as soon as she arrives from Budapest. When her plane lands in
Paris, she gets a phone call instructing her to go to the embassy. She is
followed by a stranger at the airport. Viewers know that he is significant and
dangerous by the focus of the camera on him and the foreboding music
accompanying it.
While
Moray tries to get a meeting with the Hungarian ambassador at the embassy,
Jimmy Race steps up to do the same. He says that he is a reporter from the
United States and wants to hear the latest news about the American sentenced
for spying. Neither of them have any luck, but Race refuses to leave, which
gives him an interview with a Parisian gendarme. Moray acts as a translator.
This is their first meeting, and Race seems already to be attracted to Moray,
although he doesn’t know yet (because he is relatively new in Paris) that they
work for the same newspaper.
Back at
Strang’s office, Moray insists that she was working on a very important story
before Strang pulled her out of Budapest and back to Paris. During their
conversation, Race arrives and learns that Moray is a fellow reporter and
employee. Race got an interview with the ambassador, but it was an argument
about Race’s tactics, not a statement about Anderson’s sentence. During this
argument, Mrs. Anderson called the ambassador about her husband, and Race got a
few comments from her, enough for a newspaper story.
Race
tries to get some information about Moray from Sandy Tate, the fashion designer
for the Herald Tribune. He wants to know if Moray and Strang have a
serious relationship outside the office. This sets up the romantic triangle
between Nicholas Strang, Jeanne Moray, and Jimmy Race. This particular plot
thread seems almost like an afterthought, as if a romantic angle were added for
human interest, because the chemistry seems almost nonexistent on-screen.
(This article about Assignment-Paris contains spoilers.)
A man
named Grisha works in the reference room at the newspaper. His young son Jan,
who is maybe six or seven years old, arrives with two paper bags containing
food for his father. Viewers know Grisha’s character is important because the
narrative includes him interacting with his son specifically, but it is not
until late in the film that they and the newspaper reporters working at the Herald
Tribune learn that he is Gabor Czek, one-time confidential aide to Prime
Minister Ordy of Hungary.
In spite
of what Sandy Tate had to say about Nicholas Strang and Jeanne Moray, Jimmy
Race shows up at Moray’s apartment and insists that they have dinner together.
She relents, and she tells Race that she learned of an unsubstantiated rumor in
Budapest about the Hungarian prime minister, Andreas Ordy, talking to Josip
Broz Tito, prime minister of Yugoslavia, about forming an alliance against
Jospeh Stalin, the president of the Soviet Union. This meeting and alliance
would have been considered treasonous by Stalin. As president of the Soviet
Union, he would have also been the leader of all the so-called satellite
countries in Eastern Europe. While Race and Moray talk, Anton Borvich, an
important Hungarian government official, sends over a bottle of champagne and
then approaches their table to ask Jeanne Moray to meet him for dinner.
Nicholas
Strang and the U.S. ambassador to Hungary are in Strang’s office listening to
the radio broadcast of the Hungarian ambassador’s statement. The U.S.
ambassador tells Strang that Anderson is a pawn in a much larger game. Anderson
was alleged to be a smuggler on the black market in Hungary, although he wasn’t
tried for smuggling. The Hungarian government is using Anderson for trade
concessions or perhaps an end to Voice of America broadcasts. (If the
Hungarians could have waited more than seventy years for the second Trump
administration, they might have had better luck!)
The
suspicious man following Moray in the airport tells Borvich in Borvich’s office
that he found nothing when he searched Moray’s apartment. They are looking for
something specific, but neither one says what it is. Borvich tells the man to
return to Hungary. Borvich then talks to Ordy by phone, and Ordy tells him that
he just learned that Czeki is still alive (at this point in the film, Czeki’s
identity is still a mystery to viewers). They wonder if Moray is back in Paris
to meet Czeki. Ordy wants Borvich to find Czeki before Moray does. Borvich has
Moray followed again, but by two different men, not the suspicious one from the
airport. He’s back in Budapest, ready to start surveilling Jimmy Race when he
finally gets to Budapest.
The Paris
office learns that Barker, the Herald Tribune correspondent for Hungary,
is in the hospital in Budapest. Strang wants to send Race to Budapest, and Race
is happy to accept. He doesn’t realize that he is under suspicion by the
Hungarian authorities because he spends so much time with Moray. They reason
that he must know something, too, and they think she knows how to find Czeki.
Borvich continues to have Moray surveilled. Moray is worried about Race going
to Budapest, and she is right to be worried. Race will be under surveillance by
the Hungarian secret police as soon as he steps foot on Hungarian soil. The
suspicious man at the airport is back in Budapest, and he is now tailing James
Race.
A man
arrives in Race’s Budapest office looking for Barker. When Race tells him that
Barker is in the hospital, he leaves abruptly. The second time this man comes
to Race’s office, he tells Race that he is an antiques dealer and that he has a
package, a gift, that he wants Race to give to Barker. Race agrees to do so.
The man also hands him a business card; on the card is written “Anderson is
dead.”
By now,
the major plot threads have been established, and viewers know that Race is in
danger in Budapest. Jeanne Moray is being followed in Paris, and she is in
danger there, too, even though she is not working behind the Iron Curtain at
this point. Viewers in 1952 would have known most of the background political
details of the film; they were living with them every day and reading about
current events in the newspapers. When Race visits Barker in the hospital, they
very likely would have taken it for granted, for instance, that the male nurse
in constant attendance was really a Hungarian government agent. Barker and Race
act under that assumption, too.
Before
his hospitalization, Barker was working with the Hungarian underground to get
accurate information out of the country. Race assumes this role and doesn’t
hesitate to take Barker’s place. The so-called antiques dealer is really a
contact for the underground, and this character is Race’s initial point of
contact. This clandestine activity is what gets Race arrested and Barker
killed. Barker does return to Paris, but he is dead of a heart attack. And he
arrives with nothing but his passport—no luggage, no clothes except what he is
wearing.
But the
passport photo is hiding a negative, which is what Barker and now Race have
been trying to get out of Hungary. The negative shows Tito, Ordy, Borvich, and
a fourth man standing together after their meeting to conspire against Stalin.
It is the kind of evidence that could get all four men killed. Nicholas Strang
and Jeanne Moray go to Borvich’s office to confront him, but Borvich tells them
that the photo simply shows four men standing together.
But the
true identity of Gabor Czeki, who has been working at the Herald Tribune
as Grisha all this time, is revealed and changes everything. Czeki was a
confidential aide to Prime Minister Ordy, and he was the one to draw up the
agreement between Ordy and Tito. He is also the one whose testimony will be
believed by Joseph Stalin in Moscow.
I have to admit that
I found it a little hard to believe that the Hungarians never found Czeki at
the newspaper offices themselves. They knew his daughter, so I wondered why
they never followed his children. Even if Czeki slept at the newspaper offices,
his son Jan delivered his food there. Maybe Jan was too young at the time of
the Czeki family escape for anyone else to know what he looked like as a young
boy. For a long while, the Hungarians thought Czeki was dead, so maybe they
just let go of that investigation. This detail is not explored in the film so I
can only guess.
Czeki’s
testimony and his copy of the agreement make him a wanted man by the Hungarian
government, who most certainly plan to kill him once they find him. But Czeki
is willing to return to Hungary voluntarily as long as his children can be
resettled in the United States. He will be exchanged for Jimmy Race, who has
been tortured while in prison. His return to Paris is a little bit better than
that of Barker. Race isn’t dead; he’s just catatonic and can only repeat the
lines fed to him by his Hungarian government captors.
The story in Assignment-Paris
is based on current events for 1952, something audiences at the time would have
known well. The film is a postwar, Cold War story, and some of the names that
the characters mention and terms that they use may be unfamiliar to modern-day
viewers. Here is a list
of some of those terms and people. Click on those in color for more
information:
◊ The Cold War was a period of intense
rivalry for world power between the United State and the Soviet Union, which
included their respective allies.
◊ Joseph Stalin was the leader of the
Soviet Union until his death in1953, one year after the release of Assignment-Paris.
◊ Josip Broz Tito was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and
politician who led Yugoslavia as prime minister from 1943 to 1963.
◊ Dwight D. Eisenhower was
the thirty-fourth president of the United States. You can also click here to
read his speeches at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.
◊ Jeanne Moray talks about working for the Underground during World War II. In France, it would
have been referred to more commonly as the Resistance.]
Jimmy Race’s
condition after his release from the Hungarian prison and handover to his
colleagues at the Herald Tribune might seem outlandish today, but it
reminded me of two much more recent cases. U.S. citizen Otto Warmbier was
arrested, tried, imprisoned, and tortured in North Korea in 2016. He was
eventually released in even worse condition than that of Jimmy Race to U.S.
custody in 2017. Click here for more information and an unfortunate reminder
that the tactics portrayed in Assignment-Paris are still in use around
the world today. And recall James Foley, the reporter who was killed by the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East in 2014.
As I said, Dana
Andrews is one of my favorites; however, I wasn’t quite as enamored of his
character, Jimmy Race, in Assignment-Paris. Race is supposed to be a
brash reporter from the tough East Side neighborhood of New York City, and he
is certainly that. Andrews plays the part just as I imagine he was supposed to.
But there was something about him that seemed to cross the border between
arrogance and confidence. I wasn’t sure what Jeanne Moray saw in him, and the
two didn’t have much chemistry on-screen.
Audrey Totter was
great as the fashion editor at the Herald Tribune, however, and I wish
that she had more scenes. I have seen her play the femme fatale in many films
noir, so it was refreshing to see her in a role that was nothing like her
usual. Totter’s character, Sandy Tate, is in love with Nick Strang, another
pair that seemed to have no on-screen chemistry whatsoever. Perhaps if Totter
had had more scenes in the film, this relationship would have had more spark.
I shouldn’t quibble
about the lack of romance. Assignment-Paris is not really about romance
at all. It’s a postwar, Cold War story that is stark and unflinching. As a Cold
War newspaper story, it is a rousing success. I enjoyed it, even though some of
the details were uncomfortable reminders that some things haven’t changed all
that much.
But that’s noir,
isn’t it.
September
4, 1952, release date • Directed by Robert Parrish •
Screenplay by William Bowens, Walter Goetz, Jack Palmer White •
Based on the novel Trial by Terror by Pauline Gallico and Paul
Gallico • Music by George Duning •
Edited by Charles Nelson • Cinematography by Ray Cory
Dana
Andrews as Jimmy Race • Märta Torén as Jeanne Moray •
George Sanders as Nicholas (Nick) Strang
• Audrey Totter as Sandy Tate,
fashion editor • Sandro Giglio as Grisha, newspaper reference
room •
Donald Randolph as Anton Borvich
• Herbert Berghof as Prime
Minister Andreas Ordy • Ben Astar as Minister of Information
Vajos •
Willis Bouchey as Biddle, a newspaper editor • Earl
Lee as Dad Pelham • Joseph Forte as Barker • Pál
Jávor as Laszlo Boros, the tailor • Georgiana Wulff as Gogo Czeki •
Peter J. Votrian as Jan Czeki
• Jay Adler as Henry, the
bartender • Leon Askin as Franz, one of two men sent by
Borvich to tail Moray • Victor Sutherland as Larry O’Connell •
Hanna Axmann as Oster
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
• Produced by Columbia Pictures
