assignment paris (1952)

Assignment: Paris (1952)

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Assignment -- Paris

Critics reviews, audience reviews, cast & crew.

Robert Parrish

Dana Andrews

Märta Torén

Jeanne Moray

George Sanders

Nicholas Strang

Donald Randolph

Anton Borvitch

Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

Dana Andrews is a hotshot reporter for the New York Herald Tribune assigned to its prestige international division in Paris which is headed by editor George Sanders. Andrews is covering the capture and trial of an American for espionage by the Hungarian hardline regime.

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Assignment: paris.

Directed by Robert Parrish

Paris ... a city made for excitement ... excitement on a night made for murder !

Paris-based New York Herald Tribune reporter Jimmy Race (Andrews) is sent by his boss (Sanders) behind the Iron Curtain in Budapest to investigate a meeting involving the Hungarian ambassador.

Dana Andrews George Sanders Audrey Totter Märta Torén Sandro Giglio Donald Randolph Herbert Berghof Ben Astar Willis Bouchey Earl Lee Jay Adler Frank Arnold Leon Askin Hanna Axmann-Rezzori Paul Birch Gail Bonney Monique Chantal Gino Corrado Marcel De La Brosse Maurice Doner Joseph Forte Paul Frees Gene Gary Don Gibson Sam Harris Paul Hoffman Pál Jávor Werner Klingler Don Kohler Show All… Rolf Lindau Maurice Marsac Michele Montau György Nagyajtay Charles H. Radilak Suzanne Ridgway Fay Roope Vito Scotti André Siméon Robert Stevenson Victor Sutherland Albert Szabo Hal Taggart Ken Terrell Sigfrid Tor Peter J. Votrian Murvyn Vye Georgiana Wulff Mari Blanchard William Woodson

Director Director

Robert Parrish

Producers Producers

Samuel Marx Jerry Bresler

Writers Writers

Paul Gallico William Bowers Jack Palmer White Pauline Gallico Walter Goetz

Editors Editors

Charles Nelson Donald W. Starling

Cinematography Cinematography

Burnett Guffey Ray Cory

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Carter DeHaven

Art Direction Art Direction

John Meehan

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Frank Tuttle

Composer Composer

George Duning

Costume Design Costume Design

Makeup makeup.

Clay Campbell

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Columbia Pictures

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English French Hungarian Spanish

Alternative Titles

Aveux spontanes, Budapest antwortet nicht, Destinazione Budapest, Destino: Budapest, 巴黎任务, Aveux spontanés

Drama Thriller

Releases by Date

04 sep 1952, releases by country.

85 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Josh Gillam ★★★½

Dana Andrews, Märta Torén and George Sanders star in this Cold War thriller about an American journalist in Paris who is sent to Budapest to investigate a mysterious meeting, and finds himself embroiled in a web of intrigue.

It takes a while to get going, with the focus on the central romance taking up a lot of the first act, but once the action moves behind the Iron Curtain the tension builds considerably. It’s really anti-Communist propaganda, but has enough suspense and mystery to keep the story going.

Particularly chilling was the way recordings are edited by the authorities implicate and imprison Andrews’ character, which still feels relevant today.

It could have developed some of the characters more, and takes a while to get going, but Assignment: Paris is a great thriller with some gripping moments.

Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★

A news bureau in Paris during the dark days of the Cold War covers the day's hard news as well as the latest in Parisian fashions with Dana Andrews as a WWII vet and tough New York reporter and style reporter Audrey Totter. But the background of communism draws Andrews closer to the beautiful European Marta Toren, who shows up at the paper kind of as the editor George Sanders' girlfriend, but gradually can't resist the appeal of Dana Andrews once he starts a charm offensive. Once Andrews winds up sent to Budapest on a dangerous assignment, it seems as if Sanders maybe sent him there to get him out of the way and clear his path to win the…

Review by Krautsalat ★★★½

52 Years in 52 Weeks 2020 : Film #44

A good bartender lets a customer cry in his own beer.

This spy thriller starts kinda light and slow but gets progressively darker and tighter, with a pretty effective torture montage thrown in for good measure.

Review by Kari ★★★½

It hit me while watching this movie that Dana Andrews and George Clooney look similar to one another. Earth shattering, right? Haha.

I saw this for Audrey Totter and I wasn't disappointed. It was a small role but she was great. The rest of the cast was terrific. The standout performance was by Marta Toren, a Swedish actress who died in 1957 at age 31 of a cerebral hemorrhage. She played her character with such grace, intelligence, humor, and warmth. I need to see her other movies.

Espionage movies released during this time can look so stylish with all the shadows and such. Because I don't have knowledge of all the politics from that time period, I can get confused. This one wasn't too bad although the ending was a bit flat.

Review by PUNQ ★★★

Turns dark, but remains fairly light. Very clear Dana Andrews had been through a lot by the end. It's a chess game that they could have dug deeper with, but at the same time they do a fine job of guiding us through this Cold War thriller.

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★½

Some cold war intrigue shot in thst pseudo realist 50s style. Good ambiance in the early newspaper scenes, but things go dry when the plot takes over. Solid cast at least, although Andrews is in one of those movies he is a little bored with. The underrated Robert Parrish directed (with some reshoots by Phil Karlson), but it is far from his more intriguing work.

Review by Silversaxophone ★★★

The best elements of this mildly bleak Cold War thriller presage much more involved and thorough pictures such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and The Manchurian Candidate , while showing the serious work of the New York Herald Tribune , which was circulated languidly just a few years later by Jean Seberg on the streets of Paris in Breathless . To its benefit, the anti-communist message is subsumed by the story, though the specifics of Hungary-United States politics might have been bit of a stretch for contemporary audiences. The cast is strong, with Dana Andrews’ cocky reporter broken down by the Communist Machine, and George Sanders’ cynical Bureau Chief. There is also some effective location work around the streets…

Review by 🥀 e m m é 🇵🇸 ★★★½

Seriously, this was kind of perfection. It's all romance, espionage, and newspaper game for Dana Andrews, Marta Toren, George Sanders (as a non-villain), and Audrey Totter. It's taut and suspenseful and Dana's hair gets mussed and I ask for little else in this life.

Review by Luke Thorne ★★★

Robert Parrish’s drama. An investigation into the rumour of a plot to overthrow Hungary’s communist dictatorship entangles an American journalist in a dangerous web of intrigue.

The story concerns arrogant investigative journalist Jimmy Race (Dana Andrews) and his uncompromising opponent, Jeanne Moray (Märta Torén), jumbling over worldwide intelligence and Cold War tensions in Communist Hungary.

While keeping track of a short-tempered story about a suspected American scout, Jimmy unintentionally brings the unwelcome consideration of Hungarian agent Anton Borvitch (Donald Randolph) to Jeanne’s continuing examination of conceivable conspiracy between Hungarian and Yugoslavian politicians, jeopardising both correspondents' lives.

Dana Andrews and Märta Torén both give good performances in their respective parts as Jimmy Race and Jeanne Moray, the two reporters who realise…

Review by Miriam Figueras ★★★½

A truly solid and greatly tense espionage noir that had me on the edge of my seat until the very end. It starts somewhat tepid but it increasingly raises the tension and the danger for a final act that is surely the best of the film.

The cast and journalism atmosphere reminded me of Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps but whereas in that one the focus was on corruption, in Assignment: Paris is on international intrigue. There’s less room for ambiguity but I enjoyed the results, in any case.

Dana Andrews is wonderful yet again as this brazen American in Paris. George Sanders in a non-villainous role is equally great. Audrey Totter, whom I always loved seeing, is sadly…

Review by Leavingfilmstrk ★★★

Good, not great. Everyone is good, Dana Andrews as reporter who ends up imprisoned, Märta Torén as fellow reporter and love interest, Audrey Totter, George Sanders. But the telling is too straightforward and dull, it's a good script and should have been more interesting.

Review by hotsake ★★

A surprisingly dull spy thriller that in lacking in the thriller department. The acting is serviceable as is the the direction but its fairly forgettable.

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The annex to John Grant's *A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir*

Assignment—Paris (1952)

vt Assignment: Paris ; vt European Edition US, France, Italy / 84 minutes / bw / Columbia Dir: Robert Parrish (plus an uncredited Phil Karlson) Pr: Samuel Marx, Jerry Bresler Scr: William Bowers Story: Trial by Terror (1952 Saturday Evening Post ) by Pauline and Paul Gallico, adapted by Walter Goetz, Jack Palmer White Cine: Burnett Guffey, Ray Cory Cast: Dana Andrews, Marta Toren (i.e., Märta Torén), George Sanders, Audrey Totter, Sandro Giglio, Donald Randolph, Herbert Berghof, Ben Astar, Willis Bouchey, Earl Lee, Joseph Forte, Pál Jávor, William Woodson.

Although based on a Gallico serial, this Cold War outing becomes a surprisingly tough piece that’s full of noir sensibilities and has a cast to match. It’s set in Paris and Budapest, with filming being done on location in both cities; what the Hungarians thought about the finished product is anyone’s guess.

We open at the New York Herald Tribune ’s Paris HQ, where, according to the narrator (Woodson),

“Into the offices early last year came a phone call that made one of 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 get the facts behind that headline . . .”

The man in question is hotshot young reporter Jimmy Race (Andrews). The phone call was from the Trib ’s man in Budapest, Barker (Forte), and concerned the sentencing there of an American, Robert Anderson, to twenty years’ hard labor for espionage.

Meanwhile the Trib ’s Paris editor, Nick Strang (Sanders), has ordered the paper’s other reporter in Budapest, Jeanne Moray (Torén), back to base despite the fact that she’s been hot on the trail of a story that would blow the current Hungarian administration to pieces if proved true: that Prime Minister Andreas Ordy (Berghof) and Minister of Justice Vajos (Astar) have been secretly plotting behind Stalin’s back with Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito.

Marta Toren as Jeanne and Dana Andrews as Jimmy

Jimmy and Jeanne meet for the first time, and he’s immediately smitten. She’s interested too, but far less impetuous—especially since she’s already to an extent Nick’s girl. Also in the office is an earlier paramour of Nick’s, fashion editor Sandy Tate (Totter), who still holds a candle for him. Totter’s every bit as good in the role as you’d expect, but her character is actually completely peripheral to the plot: essentially she’s there just to be Jeanne’s pal and make barbed comments about Nick and Jimmy.

George Sanders as Nick

Barker’s taken ill and hospitalized in Budapest, so Nick sends Jimmy to replace him—as a means, Jimmy suspects, to put some distance between him and Jeanne. Once there, Jimmy is welcomed by Vajos with soft soap and fake geniality. All his stories must be checked by the censors before he’s allowed to phone them home. (It comes as quite a startlement that he must use this cumbersome means of sending in stories—I kept irrationally expecting someone to send a fax—but I can remember that even as late as my own short period in Fleet Street in the 1960s reporters were phoning in their stories to trained transcribers.)

Audrey Totter as Sandy

Followed wherever he goes, Jimmy eventually makes contact with the underground in the form of tailor Laszlo Boros (Jávor). However, Vajos and Ordy are way ahead of him. Jimmy’s arrested and questioned, and then the tapes of the questioning are doctored to make it appear as if he’s freely confessing to Ordy that he’s in Hungary as a spy.

That’s when the psychological torture and brainwashing start, using similar methods to those used decades later in Guantánamo and elsewhere; I guess some things never change even with improved technology.

Sandro Giglio as Grisha

An important subplot concerns Gabor Czeki (Giglio), former aide to Ordy who became a dissident and went on the run. The Hungarians thought he was dead but now have tripped over rumors that he’s still alive. Since he was the one who drew up the deal with Tito and has retained a copy of it, it’s obvious he presents a unique threat to Ordy’s administration . . .

Herbert Berghof as Ordy (left) and Ben Astar as Vajos

Assignment—Paris ain’t no The SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965)—a very obvious major difference is that in the current movie it’s assumed the people on “our” side are, by and large, straight arrows—but neither is it a trivial piece. The particular denouement we expect doesn’t happen (shades of 1949’s The THIRD MAN although it’s a different twist), and, although the conclusion bears some hopefulness, there’s by no means any guarantee this hope will be realized. The grimness of the movie’s later stages is quite at odds with much of its earlier elements, which read more as if they were scenes from a light-hearted journalistic caper. Indeed, I found that the first half of the piece—as the relationship between Jeanne and the glib, fast-talking, cocksure Jimmy develops in a shower of one-liners—became tedious after a while. The movie was rescued once the main action moved to Budapest, where the tension and claustrophobia could build up.

Donald Randolph as Borvitch

It’s tempting to think this change of tone might coincide with the movie’s change of director midstream: Phil Karlson was fired partway through and Robert Parrish took over. But this would be to assume Assignment—Paris was shot linearly, and there’s no reason to believe it was.

It’s horrifying to realize that, just a few years after making this movie, Torén was dead: she died in 1957 of a cerebral hemorrhage, aged just 31. Other movies with a noirish connection in which she appeared include Rogues’ Regiment (1948), ILLEGAL ENTRY (1949), Deported (1950), ONE WAY STREET (1950), Panther’s Moon (1950; vt Spy Hunt ) , Sirocco (1951), The MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY (1953) and even Casbah (1948), the screen musical based on PÉPÉ LE MOKO (1936).