A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Gregory Ratoff's Academy Award-nominated "Paris Underground" is one of the movies released immediately after WWII that took an almost absurdly heroic view of things. In this case, two women - one from the US, the other from England - are in France when the Nazis invade, and they start coming up with ways to smuggle British troops out. In this day and age it'll probably remind us of "Dunkirk", but obviously lacks the brutal realism. It's not any sort of masterpiece, but it still manages to be intense enough to hold the viewer's attention (especially the apartment scenes).Worth seeing, if only once.

The timing of this film is unfortunate. It came out in October, 1945--several months after the war in Europe had ended. Had it come out during the war, it would have been an excellent propaganda film for the folks at home. Instead, it just seems a bit odd to come out when it did.As far as the casting goes, it IS unusual. Constance Bennett plays the lead and over the years she tended to play a variety of rich society ladies. Co-starring is Gracie Fields, a British music hall singer and comedienne. It's a strange pairing but it worked..particularly since they de-glamorized Bennett for the part.The story begins just as France is falling to the Nazis in 1940. An American woman (Bennett) and her companion (Fields) are trapped in Paris. They also accidentally come upon a pilot of a downed British plane...and through this help to create an underground organization which repatriates pilots through the course of the war. Naturally, the Germans are more than a bit anxious to catch them. The film's biggest strength might just be because it came out when it did. Instead of snarly, over-the-top Nazis, the Germans in this one are more believable than ones you would have seen in films just a short time earlier. Plus, a restrained performance by Bennett (one of her better ones actually) help to make this an enjoyable and well made film.

I happen to be a fan of Constance Bennett's, and also an admirer - she was not only a fine actress and a beautiful, glamorous woman, but a crackerjack businesswoman and someone who worked hard for the war effort.Having hit 40, Bennett was no longer in demand for leads; in fact, in Two-Faced Woman, she'd had a supporting role. "Paris Underground" is a film she produced herself in England, and it's very good. It's the story of the American wife, Kitty de Mornay (Bennett) of a Frenchman (George Rigaud) who is swept into the Resistance when she's asked to help get an English flier back to London. The work excites and intrigues her so much, she decides not to leave France and instead, continues helping fliers escape. She is assisted in this by a nervous friend (Gracie Fields).I found this a suspenseful and interesting film, and although it wasn't shot in France, some of the sets, like the baker's, were quite good. The performances are excellent. Rigaud as Kitty's husband is suave and likable; Kurt Krueger is excellent as a German officer who takes an interest in Kitty, and Gracie Fields, in her last role, though she lived until 1979, is wonderful as Kitty's friend.This is a little known gem, and I thought it was well done.

Constance Bennett produced this vehicle for herself, which was a fairly typical postwar story of Resistance heroism in Paris (no real location shooting, alas). Constance Bennett had plenty of energy but by this stage in her career she had no genuine charm. She battles her way through the part with determination, but just cannot engage the viewer. Her performance is too mannered, too exterior. Her chum Gracie Fields (in her last film role) does far better, is amusing, watchable, and engaging. A smoothie Frenchman, George Rigaud, plays Bennett's French husband, and he is very convincing at it. Young Kurt Kreuger is excellent as the Gestapo captain with whom Bennett forms an ambivalent semi-romantic friendship, while she is at the same time spiriting downed American and British airmen out of France with the aid of the Resistance. The film is not so bad one wouldn't want to watch it, but it avoids being good. Gregory Ratoff directed it, and it is not one of his finest achievements. If you are uncritical of such films, and do not expect too much, this could afford some diversion.