Paris Underground (1945)

Paris Underground is a moderately entertaining World War II resistance film, provided that one is willing to suspend one's disbelief to a substantial degree. For example, Underground would ask one to believe that the likes of Constance Bennett and Gracie Fields, appealing and likable though they may be, would be able to set up an entire underground network and smuggle out more than 250 people -- sometimes by merely disguising a dozen or so downed English flyers as participants in a funeral and waltzing them right past the noses of the not-very-bright Nazi occupiers. Underground's screenplay is riddled with holes in its logic, and its entire approach is shamefully "lightweight" in terms of the genuine menace that existed in occupied France, but it does provide a couple of neatly suspenseful sequences that work well and its players do well by it. Bennett is a bit mannered, as could be her wont, but she knows how to punch a scene and how to carry a picture. Fields is her delightful self, and Kurt Kreuger plays the German officer with the expected villainy. Gregory Ratoff's direction is unfussy but effective, and Lee Garmes' cinematography is a joy -- far and away the best thing in the film. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide