Paris, whether real or imagined, has rarely looked so spiritually and atmospherically gloomy on screen as it does in this underrated wartime romantic drama by Lewis Milestone. While the stark chiaroscuro black-and-white cinematography of the venerable Russell Metty certainly plays a hand in painting a bleak portrait of the refugee-laden French capital of the late 1930s, these conditions in the film are also derived from the fact that a good portion of it unfolds during many a rainy night. And it's under such circumstances that our protagonists—the hard-bitten, oft-deported Dr. Ravić (Charles Boyer), a victim of the Nazi regime when he was a member of the Austrian underground, and Joan Madou (Ingrid Bergman), a dispirited Italian-born cabaret singer—meet and eventually fall in love. However, this is neither the cutesy nor the heedless kind of love so often seen in lesser films. It is, rather, of the sort that takes place between two complex, multifaceted individuals who are world-weary, are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and, most importantly in this case, know that they have little to no control over their impending future. Needless to say, both actors, who earlier worked together in George Cukor's Gaslight (1944), come through with strong, authentic performances; Bergman, especially, as her character grows the most and requires her to depict various shades. To its credit, the film's low-key, matter-of-fact approach isn't merely relegated to the love story; its political intelligence is equally sober and attentive. And the same could be said for Milestone's direction—he does not get many opportunities here to showcase his trademark camera movements. Adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque, who also provided the source for Milestone's antiwar classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), this rich and engrossing film may have been ignored in its day but is bound to emerge triumphant sooner or later.
