classicsoncall Though he's second billed in the credits, John Wayne doesn't make his appearance in the picture until about the forty two minute mark. I kept wondering how his character, Pat Talbot, managed to evade arrest and detainment in the story, seeing as how he just showed up with no credentials to show for it in case the Nazis started asking questions. Maybe that's the problem, Talbot was never really put on the spot as he squired Michele de la Becque (Joan Crawford) after she learned that her fiancé was a Nazi collaborator.Or was he? Seems Philip Dorn's character Robert Tortot, was assuming a dual role, sort of a double agent as it were without getting into the espionage racket. Even though this picture preceded "Casablanca" by a scant month or so, the parallels are obvious enough to make it look like this lesser known film might have been pulling off a cheap imitation. You had the French Resistance angle personified by Crawford's character, complete with 'exit papers' signed by the military governor of Paris, much like Ingrid Bergman's 'letters of transit'. Wayne is no Bogey of course, nor is Philip Dorn, though John Carradine takes a pretty good stab at Conrad Veidt's Major Strasser. And if you want to make a stretch of it, J. Edward Bromberg resembles a poor man's Claude Rains as a French policeman.I didn't have too much problem with all of this, except for Crawford's see-sawing relationship between her two leading men. At one point she excoriates Tortot with that quote above in my summary line, but still sidles up to him when it's to her advantage. For his part, Wayne managed to call her 'Mike' more than a couple times with no one raising an objection. I don't know how the French or Germans would have understood the translation.With Talbot whisked away aboard a rescue plane, the film closes on a firm, patriotic note, though I highly doubt that the pilot would have had the time or resources to sky write the word 'COURAGE' in the air above Paris. It ends the picture on a high note, but it seems to me a more likely outcome would have had a German plane knock it out of the sky.

calvinnme John Wayne is second billed to the other lead, Joan Crawford, because after all this is MGM, Joan's studio, at least for awhile longer. This is a film that was obviously targeting a wartime audience with the objective of building patriotism and morale, so you have to look at the miscasting in the context of the times. Joan Crawford plays a French woman who seems to be plumbing the depths of shallowness in her high-rolling lifestyle until the Germans invade. She returns to Paris to find her fancy home confiscated, her boyfriend helping the Germans, and her inner patriotism aroused. She runs across an RAF pilot (Wayne) who has been shot down, and she must play up to her boyfriend and his German friends in order to help Wayne evade capture. Forget the fact that the actors playing Frenchmen don't sound French, that Wayne doesn't sound British, and that the Germans are portrayed as not being smart enough to find Berlin on a map, and just have fun with it. If you are a film history buff like myself, you will see much worse and weirder material about WWII particularly in the early war years.

galwaychase Here's another fine example of how the shortage of talent in Hollywood during the war lives on in infamy. Once again we are treated to another of Wayne's stinkers. Fortunately for him there was a war on and many of the real actors in Hollywood were either in uniform or the special services.Crawford put it aptly, when she said that if in the afterlife there is punishment for our sins she would be forced to watch this movie over and over again.Another of a all too long list of 1940s, 'good enough', flag waving efforts by Wayne while the real talent in Hollywood including the aging John Ford were away in uniform doing the heavy lifting for the country.Some of the other reviews here did make me chuckle as they reminded me of a comment by an old family friend who actually served in the OSS. He noted, 'if ever I were to meet up with a German who admitted to being a Nazi and a Frenchman who wasn't in the resistance I'd be in the company of a couple honest people'.Two stars for this stinker but they're only for the supporting character actors.

secondtake Reunion in France (1942)First important fact: this movie, about the first year of WWII when Hitler took over France, was released a month before "Casablanca." It does not compare in most ways with the drama, the humor, the writing, the music, the velocity, and the legendary actors of the more famous movie. But it is a very good movie with an interesting early pro-American, pro-French message. Joan Crawford crackles as much as she can in a topsy turvy role, going from spoiled and frivolous rich woman Michele de la Becque to (briefly) a refugee to, finally, an ordinary woman fighting with all her heart for France. There are two male actors with important roles and they couldn't be more different. One is Michele's lover and fiancé, played with a cultured perfection by Philip Dorn, a Dutch actor who pulls off the pan-Euro, mostly French aristocrat and businessman well. Opposite him in every way is the homey, tough, humble American who shows up halfway through the film, John Wayne. I don't know if this really makes sense in the film, but I can see it on paper, since Wayne played a non-cowboy merchant seaman in the terrific John Ford film which prefigures this one in some ways, "The Long Voyage Home." He doesn't seem as wily and smart as a fugitive from the Nazis would have to be, behind the lines in occupied Paris, but he at least plays the role of an ordinary American ready to help the French, and this is the political message throughout.In fact, the movie borders on a brilliant propaganda device, putting message ahead of plot now and then, just perceptibly. Crawford is so good even her speeches make a convincing case, and I'm assuming American audiences cheered her on by December of 1942 when it was released (on Christmas day). The scenes of the Germans taking over Paris are always horrifying, and they are again here. There is even a deliberate homage to Soviet director Eisenstein when a baby carriage runs off after the mother is killed by gunfire.But back to "Casablanca." It's an interesting problem to solve, feeding the American audience worried about the war and about U.S. involvement. Because Hollywood was both a symptom of public opinion and a shaper of it, and these are two rather different kinds of films with very similar messages. Director Jules Dassin, who is not French but American, had just started making films in 1941, and there is a sense of expertise at the expense of intuitive magic. "Reunion in France" is strong, smart, and convincing. But it doesn't sizzle or build the aura of the time like it could. And yet, in its defense, it has no perspective at all on the events, since it was made while they were unfolding, even before they were unfolding since it has to anticipate to some extent how the film will settle six months after being written and shot. Watch it. It's really good.