Dir: Sheldon Reynolds | US Drama
The credits proudly declare this film ‘Sheldon Reynolds’ Foreign Intrigue’, this being the film version of his TV series which he brought to the big screen – complete with Charles Norman’s ‘Foreign Intrigue Concerto’, which keeps popping up on the soundtrack with annoying regularity – with the added attraction of Bob Mitchum talking French and Swedish in a big suit against the backdrop of attractive colour location work of Vienna and Stockholm.
This 1956 feature is full of shots of people trudging down darkened streets away from the camera, along with two classy European female leads in the form of Genevieve Page and Ingrid Thulin (spelt ‘Tulean’ in the credits); although the most interesting character by far is a fellow named ‘Spring’, played by Frederick O’Brady who’d performed a similar function in Orson Welles’ ‘Confidential Report’, with which this film has been compared.
Happily while a large part of the preliminaries are garrulous and uninvolving it gets much better in the final half hour. @RichardChatten