Who knows the provenance of this left-over from the early 1950s? (I bet it was shot earlier than 1955. By 1954 Irene Papas, who has almost nothing to do here, was in big-budget movies in Italy). My guess is that the dreary "thriller" was an unsold TV pilot for a series in which minor Hollywood leading man Paul Campbell would have been some kind of investigator into Euro espionage. The US/West German (?) co-production may have seemed excitingly glamorous but the reality is people having dull, often post-synchronised conversations about things of no interest in locations of no visual appeal. (Stuff was also shot in London, but we'll come back to that). There's no action. Admittedly George and Gertrude Fass were just starting out as TV writers, but they were involved in some top shows. What went wrong? Everything points to producers trying to recoup by adding copious library footage (there really is a huge amount of it) in order to sell it to British cinemas as a featurette. This seems to have worked. The Renown re-master in 2009 (quality is still poor) comes complete with a BBFC certificate. The film was in fact released in 1956 by DUK, one of E. J. Fancey's companies. Is this the reason daughter Adrienne plays a receptionist and, if so, was the London footage also added later? As a matter of interest, Adrienne gives a much better performance than "Jacqueline" Collins. Yes, it's Jackie demonstrating why she was never going to make it as an actress like sister Joan. Can anyone be bothered to do more research? I can't.
