In order to review this movie, you need to put yourself back into the 50s when it was made. WW2 was just a decade before (closer than Desert Storm is to us), and the cold war was raging. Tales of spies, traitors, and exotic locations were just the ticket for mid-50s audiences. FOREIGN INTRIGUE has plenty of interesting turns and surprises, but it seems to be trying too hard to mix THIRD MAN with MR ARKADIN and perhaps a bit of WW2 Hitchcock (Sabotage, Foreign Correspondent?). I'm not a big Mitchum fan, but he gives his usual looming, low-key performance, and the supporting players do well. My real reason for watching this film (and I've been waiting over 30 years to catch it) is to see Frederick O'Brady, who plays the heavy (he was reviewed at the time as "out-Lorrying Peter Lorre."). He was my French teacher in 1973-74 at the Eastman School of Music and a great raconteur. He had enormous talent in music, languages, writing, and of course acting (having worked with Orson Welles in ARKADIN, plus Jean Renoir, Roger Vadim, and others). If you can find his autobiography ALL TOLD, you'll be fascinated. He told us that Mitchum tried to teach him to drive during the making of this movie, resulting in a wrecked car. Some thought this would be O'Brady's ticket to Hollywood, but instead French directors dropped him, assuming he would be asking too much money for "lowly" French pictures. He spent many years on stage and never had another juicy film part like "Spring" in this picture. If you enjoy the spy genre and aren't in a big hurry for lots of blazing action, find this movie!
