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 They claim that Joan Crawford and John Wayne are an "electrifying screen duo" in
this movie about the "gallantry displayed by the French" after they get their
country taken over by the Nazis. The compare this to Casablanca and say that Reunion In France is a "vivid love story and a nail-biting suspense tale." Crawford plays rich
French woman that hides Wayne in her apartment after he gets shot down flying
for the RAF. She tries to get her rich boyfriend to help them out. "But then
the
dark mist of betrayal permeates the proceedings, obscuring all love and
allegiance." 1942, 100 minutes, VHS
In wartime, you have to pull out all the stops. The conventional wisdom has to
be discarded in an effort to surprise the enemy and catch him napping. You
have to be able to think outside the box and come up with that one-two punch
they'll never see coming. In World War II, Hollywood eagerly joined up with
America and her allies in an effort to whip a little Axis tail and they too
wanted to launch their own assaults trumpeting freedom, courage, and sacrifice.
Unfortunately, sometimes the audience suffered a little friendly fire, took
one for the team, became some collateral damage. How else to explain the
excruciatingly unsuccessful teaming of Joan Crawford and John Wayne in a movie
about occupied France? This was one of those flicks that I snickered at and
eagerly snapped up as soon as I saw the cover where Crawford has one of those
noble wartime poses, that says "I will survive this movie with John Wayne"
while Wayne looks likes he's searching for the goof that thought it would be a
good idea to have him dressed up as a chauffeur for a good portion of the movie
(Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that Joan suggested that?).
As pointless as it was to probably be involved with making this movie, at
least they probably got a little bread out of the deal. The movie going public
though was forced to pay good money for this one that could have been better
spent on munitions, medicine or since this was 1942 and the Jerries were
running roughshod over those wusses in Europe, German language lessons. As I
was watching this one, I began to understand why the French people are usually
a pretty crabby people and complain whenever we import out superior culture to
them (Disneyland and Big Macs). You see, unlike America who got a big W in
World War II and came out the top babyface (even if it did take us forever to
get involved in it) in the world (the whining of the commies and third world
excepted, but they were just jealous, right?), France has to live with the fact
that they rolled over on their own country like Sammy The Bull getting immunity
for testifying against the Dapper Don. I think I speak for all Americans when I
watched the scene of the Nazis marching through the Arc de Triumph (Did the
Germans name that?) and and was sickened by the Frenchies' utter lack of
pride. If those Teutonic worms had the balls to try to march through the Arch
in St.
Louis, you can bet that me, Nelly, Harry Truman and every other red blooded
Missourian would have been down there with our Saturday Night Specials sending
them back to the Fuhrer via the Big Muddy. Then we'd head over to the east
side to see the Lay-dies!  Really though, I'm not here to complain about Dirty Pierre getting a case of
the limber tail sixty years ago, but when I gots to sit through some propaganda
movie designed to make me feel like you people were pulling your weight in the
war and that means that Joan Crawford is going to be playing a character named
Michelle de la Becque and affecting a faint to non-existent accent, then I'm
going to get a little lippy. If Crawford's character is supposed to represent
all that is great about the French people than I have to wonder why we ever
busted our hump to rescue them. You see, she's one of those fair-weather
patriots that "rises" to the occasion only when the war is smacking her upside
the head and her boyfriend has turned traitor. Before this, Nazis were
sweeping over the rest of Europe and Joan's biggest concern was that she was
going to have to start getting her silk imported in a diplomatic pouch or
something. The first part of the movie strenuously tries establish her
character as a rich, thoughtless, self-centered jerk (How am I supposed to buy
Joan in a role like that?). They do this in all the usual ways - mainly by
having her mistreat the hired help at the department store that supplies all
her beautiful gowns (supposedly the gowns were the only positive experience for
Joan while making this film). You don't think that once everyone in Paris
starts running around with their "Nazi World Tour '40" concert tees on that
she'll have to slink back to these gals and recognize that they really are good
people even though they're poor French trash, do you? I'll bet that they're
such solid
citizens that they will even help Joan out when she needs it, instead of
reporting her to the Nazis as a some kind of hoochie-spy and getting her shot,
like anyone of us would have done (well, if we were French that is). Joan has
a
fiancee named Robert Cortot who is some type of engineering genius and also
really rich. He babbles all the time about how busy he is and ships Joan off
to Spain so that he can help win the war. When the Nazis take France like some
twelve-year old girl soused on two wine coolers, Joan slinks back home.
This is when the movie plays the war out in a bunch of spinning newspaper
headlines, scenes of Joan stumbling around with dirt on her face (The horror of
war!) amid a bunch of scurvy refugees including a little kid with a missing
foot (Those damn Nazis!). When she gets back home, Robert is busy with the war
effort, but now it's the Nazi war effort!  Oh, Robert (say it Ro-bare)! Say it isn't so! Joan, having been a war refugee
for about a week, has changed and is now superpatriot A#1 and can barely
contain her contempt for the occupying Germans that Robert introduces her to
(one of them is even John Carradine!). He takes her to a really sweet cocktail
party
that he's hosting and she is shocked, just shocked that it is a Nazi dinner
party. The only question I have about these Nazi dinner parties is whether
they really arranged their dining tables in the shape of a swastika? That
seemed a bit much, but even though these were French collaboraters we were
dealing with, I was still enraged enough that I was ready to sign up and get
shipped over there to send those losers back to Berlin. Don't they know how
tough a table arrangement like that is for the help to properly serve the
various courses?
Half the guests are always going to have to be staring at the waiter's backside
whenever they're bringing out the croque monsieurs and the snails. What
barbarians! With Joan's new found sense of French pride, she leaves her
fiancee and goes back to her own mansion. What I like about her is that she
was apparently all jacked up to have a big, fancy dinner party even though her
country had been conquered until she found out that it was going to be Germans
and their running dogs. Boy, have you changed Michelle! Sometimes I don't
even think I know who you are anymore! When she gets back to her house, she
discovers that the horrors of war have struck her right where she lives! The
Nazis have commandeered her house for some administrative offices and now she
is allowed only one room in the entire mansion. She chooses the concierge's
room , since it has its own entrance to the street and you begin to understand
why she hates the Nazis (first they throw bad dinner parties, now they're in
her house). How much can one shallow, rich, snob be expected to endure? When
I saw her looking around her new digs and that the Nazis had defaced the
paintings on the wall by drawing little Hitler mustaches and pathetic
comb-overs on the people's faces, I began looking at the clock and wondering
when in the hell the Duke would show up to save France. 
Duke Wayne finally appears about half way through this film as an RAF pilot who
got shot down over France and is now on the run from the Krauts. He's being
trailed by some German agents (why don't they just arrest him?) and he hasn't
eaten or slept in awhile when he runs into Michelle. After a little back and
forth, she takes him into her place and gives him some food and a bed. She
finds out his identity from some handy-dandy disk that he's secreted away in
the heel of his shoe and she immediately decides that she should go ask the
gals at her new job for their help in getting the Duke back to England so he
can resume getting his arse shot back down by the Red Baron. Job? That's
right! Michelle has made such a complete change in the way she thinks about
life that she even stoops to getting a job as a fitter's assistant at the
department store where she used to torment the help. Wow, I really admire her
for all the personal growth - a real life grown-up job! These moments are some
of the most amusing in the movie as they show all these fat German broads
coming into the shop wanting the latest fashions. We all know they're evil
because only skinny French chicks should wear cutting edge gowns and fur
coats. One of the German broads (if they aren't fat and nasty, they're old and
nasty) is played by Natalie Schafer, whom you will recall as Mrs. Howell from Gilligan's Island. Oh, how this movie cried out for Jim Backus. She was
basically doing a humorless version of Lovey in this one. At this point I shut
the movie down for about an hour and half and busted out my collection of Gilligan's Island videos and watched my favorite episode three times (the one
with the headhunters). Grudgingly, I returned to this movie and wondered if
Duke Wayne was going to do anything besides hiding in the closet getting off on
how Michelle's dresses smelled. For some reason Duke starts hitting on
Michelle (Aren't you supposed to be trying to escape back to Britain or
something?), but she's pulling a wholly unconvincing gimmick about how there's
no time for love in war or some such baloney. Duke gets in a little he-man
action though when he decks the drunk and amorous Nazi that has taken over the
rest of
Michelle's pad. Then she concocts a plan to get Robert (even though he's a
traitor) to help her and the Duke get out of France. I never understood why she thought this plan would work or why she thought that
Robert would want to help her after she punked him just because he went and
looked out
for number one. Then I didn't understand why Robert actually did help her.
But what really eluded me was why in tarnation anyone would believe that Duke
Wayne was not only a American college student, but a chauffeur as well. The
Nazis weren't buying it either and tried to doublecross all involved, but since
this is a propaganda movie, the doublecross was really on them! See, it turns
out that Robert is really a good guy and is only pretending to work with the
bad guys in an effort to be a front for the underground or something (His
plants turn out defective military equipment for the Nazis!). Somehow or other
there are two other English soldiers posing as German soldiers and they all
hook up with Duke and there's an old British guy that had been pretending to
be an old German official, but was really a British secret agent and it all
adds up to a big car chase and Duke escape. Michelle learns that Robert is not
the biggest dog log on the planet next to Bud Selig, but more noble than
Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and Nancy Reagan all put together. She immediately runs
back to him and is ready to begin her life as faux-Nazi suck up. I'm glad
that she's more than willing to do her part by living a cushy and glamourous
existence and that somehow this will trick the Nazis into losing the war.
She's a regular Mrs. Miniver! A terrible, unbelievable story that makes little
sense on any level and is topped off by the fact that you don't believe
anything the stars do in this movie (except for when Duke slugs that Nazi).
While Crawford and Wayne might have been perfect for one of those mismatched
buddy
movies (a la Turner & Hooch), they generate nothing other than to show us what would have happened to Casablanca if it had been hampered by a dull as dirt story (both in smarts, action, and
emotion) and stars that thought mouthing bogus platitudes saluting the courage
of a people who rolled over like they were the New Jersey Nets or something was
somehow inspiring a multitude of people to keep fighting the good fight (or in
the French case, to start fighting). Duke and Crawford's scenes could have been filmed on separate sets
as little as the played off one another. They wanted us to think there was
some love triangle, but Duke just would periodically grab and kiss her or say
he loved her, while she would turn her nose up at him. All the while everyone
(including Michelle) figured that Robert was a dirtbag conspirator, so he
wasn't even in the picture (I don't think Duke and Robert even ever had a scene
together). Suffice it to say, the love triangle bit flopped along with
everything else in this hasty stew of war time posturing and cliches. Sit
through this
abominable entry in the "Rah, Rah, Rah! Go Allies!" film genre and you
understand what they're talking about when you hear people say "war is hell!"
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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