Innocents in Paris

Innocents in Paris
Directed by	Gordon Parry
Screenplay by	Anatole de Grunwald
Produced by	Anatole de Grunwald John Woolf
Starring	Alastair Sim Ronald Shiner Claire Bloom Margaret Rutherford Claude Dauphin Jimmy Edwards
Cinematography	Gordon Lang
Edited by	Geoffrey Foot
Music by	Joseph Kosma
Production company	Romulus Films
Release date	1953
Running time	102 min
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£161,462[1]

Innocents in Paris is a 1953 British-French international co-production comedy film produced by Romulus Films, directed by Gordon Parry and starring Alastair Sim, Ronald Shiner, Claire Bloom, Margaret Rutherford, Claude Dauphin, and Jimmy Edwards, and also featuring James Copeland.^[2] Popular French comedy actor Louis de Funès appears as a taxi driver, and there are cameo appearances by Christopher Lee, Laurence Harvey and Kenneth Williams. The writer and producer was Anatole de Grunwald, born in Russia in 1910, who fled to Britain with his parents in 1917. He had a long career there as a writer and producer, including the films The Way to the Stars, The Winslow Boy, Doctor's Dilemma, Libel, and The Yellow Rolls-Royce.^[3]

Plot

The film is a romantic comedy about a group of Britons flying out from The London Airport for a weekend in Paris in 1953 in a British European Airways Airspeed Ambassador. An English diplomat (Sim) is on a working trip to obtain an agreement with his Russian counterpart (Illing); a Royal Marine bandsman (Shiner) has a night out on the tiles after winning a pool of the French currency held by all the Marines in his band; a young woman (Bloom) finds romance with an older Frenchman (Dauphin) who gives her a tour of Paris; an amateur artist (Rutherford) searches out fellow painters on the Left Bank and in the Louvre; a hearty Englishman (Edwards) spends the entire weekend in an English-style pub; and a Battle of Normandy veteran (Copeland) is an archetypal Scotsman in kilt and Tam o' Shanter who finds love with a young French woman (Gérard).

The film displays the mores and manners of the British, and, to a lesser extent, the French, in the early nineteen-fifties. At this time, Britons were allowed to take only £25 out of the country,^[4] as £5 British cash and traveller's cheques, and there are several scenes showing how the travellers dealt with this. The film also features a Russian nightclub (of which there were several in Paris at the time), with Ludmila Lopato, a Russian tzigane chanteuse, singing the original Russian version of the song that became "Those were the Days", which became a hit record for Mary Hopkin.

Cast

• Alastair Sim: Sir Norman Baker
• Ronald Shiner: Dicky Bird
• Claire Bloom: Susan Robbins
• Margaret Rutherford: Gwladys Inglott
• Claude Dauphin: Max de Lorne
• Jimmy Edwards: Captain George Stilton
• Mara Lane: Gloria Delaney
• James Copeland: Andy MacGrégor "L'Écossais"
• Gaby Bruyère: Josette
• Monique Gérard: Raymonde
• Peter Illing: Panitov
• Colin Gordon: Customs officer
• Kenneth Kove: Bickerstaff
• Frank Muir: Stilton's friend
• Philip Stainton: Nobby Clarke
• Peter Jones: Langton
• Stringer Davis: Arbuthnot
• Richard Wattis: Wilkinson, Sir Norman Baker's secretary
• The Band of Plymouth Group Royal Marines
• Louis de Funès: Célestin
• Albert Dinan: Louvre doorman
• Jean Richard
• Maurice Baquet
• Ludmilla Lopato: Chanteuse
• Georgette Anys: Madame Célestin
• Polycarpe Pavloff
• Irène de Strozzi
• Grégoire Aslan: Carpet seller
• The Can-Can Dancers from The Moulin Rouge, Paris

Uncredited (in alphabetical order)

• Reginald Beckwith: Photographer
• Joan Benham: Receptionist
• Max Dalban: Butcher
• Laurence Harvey: François
• Hamilton Keene: Reporter
• Christopher Lee: Lieutenant Whitlock
• Andreas Malandrinos: French customs officer
• Bill Shine: Customs officer
• Toke Townley: Airport porter
• Kenneth Williams: Window dresser at London Airport

References

This page was last edited on 18 December 2023, at 03:51