Bennett plays Kitty De Mornay, the initially shallow American wife of an official in the French foreign ministry (Georges Rigaud). Kitty pays no heed to the Nazi's march to Paris, figuring the Germans would never take Paris and that it's little concern of hers, anyway. Kitty's cavalier attitude is a little hard to swallow, considering she's married to a Frenchman, even if we are led to believe she cheats on him and is about to leave him. But a lot of things go down uneasily in Boris Ingster and Gertrude Purcell's screenplay, based on Etta Shiber's novel. Kitty only starts to become concerned when she and her dowdy British friend Emmy (English comedienne Gracie Fields) run into Nazi roadblocks in their attempt to get out of Paris and eventually find a way to England. They come across a downed English pilot (Leslie Vincent) in the country, and suddenly start risking life and limb to protect him, hiding him in their car and, later, back in Paris when they are forced to return there.
Kitty's moral and political awakening doesn't really come across convincingly, partially because the man she risks being shot over is a nothing character. The flyboy is such a Central Casting stiff-upper-lip Brit that it's a stretch to think he would get her to second-guess her indifference. But even though Paris Underground was made thousands of miles from Central Casting, its generic touches can also be found in the casting of Kurt Krueger as a heel-clicking, aristocratic Nazi officer who takes a shine to Kitty, and who she sweet-talks to get him off her and Emmy's scent. Much of the movie similarly feels by-the-numbers, which makes it hard to call this rarely-seen picture's DVD a rediscovery. (The print used for the transfer is an English version carrying the movie's title in that country, Madame Pimpernel, which only raises expectations for a sly, rousing tale similar to The Scarlet Pimpernel, which this never becomes.)
While planning to get themselves out of the country as soon as possible, Kitty and Emmy decide to get another downed flyer out with them, but then decide to stick around and keep using the same contacts as an underground railroad of sorts. Any similarity between Kitty and Emmy's glossy doings and the real French resistance is purely coincidental; the two well-dressed women's efforts come off like the polite, amateur sleuthing within an Agatha Christie novel. Meanwhile, Paris Underground also offers a depoliticized picture of World War II., offering no Jewish characters or mention of the plight of Jews from Nazi-perpetrated genocide. Whether willfully or not, Paris Underground is a very airbrushed version of world events. On a more dramatic level, the movie, directed by sometime character actor Gregory Ratoff, also keeps to a predictable path, with clearly-marked heroes and villains.
That said, Paris Underground still somehow uncorks a nifty suspense sequence for its climax, in which the heel-clicking Nazi and his troops search a darkened basement for Kitty and her husband. But it's simply not enough, especially when it leads to a laughable resolution in which we learn Kitty and Emmy smuggled over 250 soldiers out of France. From the movie's action alone, you would guess they had smuggled out six-10 tops - so the grandiose claim feels foolish. Bennett deserves praise for her enterprise in making Paris Underground (she was apparently quite the businesswoman, later founding a cosmetics company), and her movie's heart is in the right place. But, to be generous, Paris Underground is one of those ripped-from-the-headline films that aren't designed to have a long shelf life. And this one is way past expiration.
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by Paul Sherman
