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