Innocents in Paris (1953)

A collection of generally uninformed and eccentric Brits (including Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Claire Bloom, Ronald Shiner, James Copeland, Jimmy Edwards, and Mara Lane) travel to Paris and have miscellaneous and unconnected adventures.

Nostalgia is on display as much as jokes in this mild comedy. The central idea is that France is a strange and distant land that is hard to understand, but that every Englishman should go there once. How well the film works for you will depend on how silly you find that concept. I realize the world was less connected in 1953, but it is hard to imagine that people thought of Paris as some unknown other-land. Each of our main characters run into some part of French culture that throws them for a loop (or in one case, it is Russian culture as Sim’s diplomat ends up in one of the Russian nightclubs that the Internet tells me were all the rage in France in the ‘50s). Sometimes this West-meets-West confusion leads to romance while other times it tends toward self discovery.

The humor is too slight to illicit more than a smile, the romances lack emotion, and the self discovery is shallow. The cast is good but the film seems to be tossed together haphazardly, with the hook of “far away France” intended to carry the pieces. Even Sim and Rutherford can’t rise above the material. It’s fine as background, if you happen to want to fantasize about post-war France, but it isn’t a film to sit and watch.

The most amusing quality of Innocents in Paris is how many racy situations it contains without admitting to them—1953 British films tended to be quite straight-laced. I don’t recall a film with this many prostitutes that wasn’t specifically about prostitutes. Though not that many of the travelers make it into bed with anyone, prostitute or otherwise. The trophy wife and the bellboy are the only ones who spend significant time bouncing about. While Bloom’s wide-eyed girl is assumed to have finally had a quick afternoon dip when the blinds are closed, she’d spent over an hour previously being so innocent that she is having the best time of her life on the town without ever realizing that the older man she’s with has been trying to get her cloths off all night. The military drummer goes home with a party girl, but then pays and leaves without doing anything when he realizes she’s working to support a young daughter. It makes me wonder if there might not have been a better drama hidden in this movie.