To Paris With Love

As long as you take To Paris with Love (1955) as a charming but slight romantic glimpse at the many beauties of the City of Light and not the usual level of comedy you'd expect from the star and director of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), you may be amused by this tale of a middle-aged widower and his 20-year-old son who decide to play matchmaker for each other but find themselves falling for the woman each has picked out for the other. The lack of chemistry one reviewer noted between star Alec Guinness and Odile Versois, as the romantic interest provided him in the story, may be at least partially blamed on their off-screen antagonism. The delicately beautiful Versois, a popular young leading lady in France since her 1948 film debut, annoyed Guinness by constantly turning up late on the set. "I told her I thought she was a great actress with a great career but that she was the most selfish girl I had ever come across," Guinness said. "Floods of tears." Versois went on to a long career, appearing many times in British films, though never again with Guinness. The comic highlight of the story has Guinness doing some inspired physical comedy as his character undertakes a disastrous game of badminton, swallowing a shuttlecock and getting caught in the net. The scene was shot in England at the Pinewood Studios on a cold, rainy day, and Guinness, clad only in a light sport shirt and thin trousers, was required to climb a very prickly fir tree over and over. "It was one of those days when I thought I am worth every penny they pay me," he later recounted. He was happy to bid the production "good riddance" and move on to greater things, including the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955), the Hollywood period romance The Swan (1956), and his Oscar®-winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The year after this movie was released, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, who knighted him in 1959. To Paris with Love was the third film Guinness made with director Robert Hamer, and they would make one more together, though none were as well-received as their first, the classic British comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which Guinness played seven members of the ill-fated d'Ascoyne family. But the actor always had the highest regard for Hamer and was infuriated in 1986 when screenwriter Bridget Boland called Hamer and Alexander Mackendrick (who directed Guinness in The Man in the White Suit, 1951, and The Ladykillers) "fifth-rate directors." Guinness retaliated by saying he found Gaslight (1940, the original British version), which Boland had written, to be a bore. "I think she's a bit mad-with loneliness," he added. To Paris with Love was scripted by Robert Buckner, who had been a contract writer at Warner Brothers on movies for Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and James Cagney, for whom he wrote the Oscar®-nominated screenplay for Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Director: Robert Hamer Producer: Earl St. John, Edwin Astley, Antony Darnborough Screenplay: Robert Buckner; based on a story by Sterling Noel Cinematography: Reginald H. Wyer Editing: Anne V. Coates Art Direction: Maurice Carter Original Music: Edwin Astley Cast: Alec Guinness (Col. Sir Edgar Fraser), Odile Versois (Lizette Marconne), Vernon Gray (John Fraser), Elina Labourdette (Sylvia Gilbert). C-78m. by Rob Nixon