Movie Review: Assignment - Paris (1952)

Also Known As: Assignment: Paris; Assignment - Paris!  

Genre: Cold War Espionage Drama  

Director: Robert Parrish  

Starring: Dana Andrews, Marta Toren, George Sanders, Audrey Totter  

Running Time: 84 minutes  

Synopsis: Nick Strang (George Sanders) runs the Paris desk of the Herald Tribune newspaper. His reporters Jimmy Race (Dana Andrews) and Jeanne Moray (Marta Toren) start a romance while covering the story of an American imprisoned in Budapest on spying charges. With Jeanne on the trail of an even bigger story about the Hungarian Prime Minister plotting a break from Russia, Jimmy is assigned to Budapest, while Hungarian communist officials eager to root out dissidents keep a close eye on both reporters.

What Works Well: This Cold War drama peeks behind the Iron Curtain and is unafraid to cram a complex plot within a short running time. Romance, ambassadorial machinations, spies, dissidents, investigative reporters, and prime ministerial secret plots all find a niche in William Bowers' screenplay (adapting a book by Paul and Pauline Gallico). Director Robert Parrish rounds the intrigue by affording many scenes to the Hungarian communist antagonists, and finds some innovative camera angles to supplement the tension.

What Does Not Work As Well: Too much is going on for the 84 minutes of running time, and some storylines (including the romance and the initial American imprisoned in Hungary) are all but abandoned despite considerable early investment. The need to hustle the plot along forces plenty of logic shortcuts.

Conclusion: An effective but over-ambitious assignment.

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