One of the worst pictures made by John Wayne, Reunion in France is actually a Joan Crawford star vehicle, and not a very good one at that.
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Original movie poster
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Grade: C- (* out of *****)
A year later, Crawford would lose her long-term MGM contract after 18 years of service due to declining popularity at the box-office.
Though attempting to combine a lush romantic film with war-time propaganda, “Reunion in France” is ultimately a shallow melodrama, marred by a convoluted plot about the courageous French Resistance during the Occupation.
Crawford plays Michele de la Becque, a French haut-couture model who’s engaged to a seemingly pro-Nazi industrialist designer, Robert Cortot (Philip Dorn).
Wayne is cast in a thankless role as Pat Talbott, a downed RAF pilot from Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, who takes a risk by seeking Michele’s help.
The dialogue is preposterous. In one of the early conversations between Michele and Wayne, she asks: “Were you shot down?” Wayne replies: “My plane was. I couldn’t figure out a way to stay up without it so I came down too. It turns out, Wayne was put into a concentration camp but became “bored” and escaped.
Michele then sets out to acquire the necessary papers for him. Meanwhile, Wayne, again bored, picks a fight with a German officer whom Michele befriends to help him, and even leaves her apartment into the open. Michele then protests: Ï wish you’d stop being so gay, so romantic and American about this!”
In the climax, Dorn arranges a permit for her to leave France and she manages to pass Wayne as her chauffeur. They reach the border, after some difficulties. Michele then realizes that Dorn’s collaboration with the Nazis is fake and that he is actually a French patriot, and as a result, she returns to his side, leaving Wayne to proceed to London and carry on his flying missions against the Germans.
Released in December 1942, as a prestige production, the movie failed, despite its timeliness, and neither director nor stars were spared by the critics.
T.S. in “The New York Times” observed: “If Reunion in France is the best tribute that Hollywood can muster to the French underground forces of liberation, then let us try another time. The film is simply a stale melodramatic exercise for a very popular star. In the role of a spoiled rich woman who finds her ‘soul’ in the defeat of France, Joan Crawford is adequate to the story provided her, but that is hardly adequate to the theme.”
Joan Crawford was later quoted as saying: “Oh God. If there is an afterlife and I am to be punished for my sins, this is one of the pictures they’ll make me see over and over again. John Wayne and I both went down for the count, not just because of a silly script but because we were so mismatched. Get John out of the saddle, and you’ve got trouble.”
Time magazine described the film sarcastically as a “a Joan Crawford version of the fall of France,” and the N.Y. Herald Tribune’s reviewer complained that, “a lot of good players are wasted.”
Other critics were amazed by the “strange assortment” of accents, as the N.Y. Post reviewer noted: “Joan Crawford conversed in pure American when she is supposed to be French,” while other actors affect unsuccessfully French and German accents.’
The movie was released in the U.K. as “Mademoiselle France.”
Ava Gardner can be spotted in a cameo as a shop girl (uncredited). In a few years, she would become a major star.
Cast
Joan Crawford as Michele de la Becque
John Wayne as Pat Talbot
Philip Dorn as Robert Cortot
Reginald Owen as Gestapo agent
John Carradine as Head of the Paris Gestapo
Moroni Olsen as Gerbeau
Natalie Schafer as Amy Schröder
Albert Bassermann as General Hugo Schroeder
Ann Ayars as Juliette
J. Edward Bromberg as Durand
Henry Daniell as Emile Fleuron
Howard Da Silva as Anton Stregel
Charles Arnt as Honoré
Morris Ankrum as Martin
Edith Evanson as Genevieve
Ernst Deutsch as Captain (as Ernest Dorian)
Ava Gardner as shopgirl Marie (uncredited)
Credits:
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Ladislaus Bus-Fekete; Contributing Writer: Charles Hoffman
Screenplay by Jan Lustig [de], Marvin Borowsky, Marc Connelly
Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cinematography Robert H. Planck
Edited by Elmo Veron
Music by Franz Waxman
Distributed by MGM
Release date: December 25, 1942
Running time: 102 minutes
Budget $1,054,000
Box office $1,863,000
