Strong and Moving!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

***SPOILERS*** The sleepy looking Robert Mitchum has a hard time staying awake here as press agent Dave Bishop for the extremely rich, he's worth hundreds of millions, and secretive Howard Hughes like Victor Danemore, Jean Gallard, who died of a sudden heart-attack at his villa on the French Rivera. With everyone he comes in contact with in knowing that he was the last person to see the great but elusive Danemore alive Bishop is constantly asked what were the last words that the great man said before he expired? The only words that we as well as Bishop herd Danemore say was some kind of gargling sounds that were totally unintelligible. Finding out that Danemore made a number of trips to Vienna a couple of times a year Bishop travels there to find out what they were all about and if they and anything to do with his untimely death.This all leads to some cock & bull story about Denemore's past in him finding out that before WWII he was very active in sniffing out stories about Hitler and those he dealt with. It's then where he somehow got information about a number of important persons in different European countries who made a deal with Hiter to sell their countries out to the Nazis. And when Hitler and his Nazis took over make them the heads of state as a reward for their treasonous actions. Now with the war over and Hitler being dead and no threat to anyone Denemore is still using that knowledge to blackmail them to pay for his high flying lifestyle! Bishop finds out one of those his former boss Danemore was blackmailing Swedish industrialist OIaf Lindquist who committed suicide, in not being able to take it anymore, five years ago. Smelling a big story Bishop takes the first plane out of the Vienna airport to Sweden to interview Lindquist's widowed wife ,Inga Tidblad, in an attempt to find out what he was being blackmailed for.It's in Sweden that Bishop also meets Lindquist daughter Brita, Ingrid Tulean, and starts to, in having noting else on his mind, romance her. The complected plot also involves the late Danemore's gold digging wife Dominique, Genevieve Page, who despite losing her meal ticket wants to keep the money, from her husbands blackmailing, rolling in. It's Dominique who uses the naive Bushop to find the names of the persons he's been blackmailing all these years. There's also the mysterious Johnathan Spring,Frederick O'Brady, who's working for one of those whom Denemore was blackmailing who keeps springing up in the movie to give Bishop a hard time and even tells the , what looks like, barley awakened conscious Bishop that he's to assassinate him! That's after he gets his hands on the information about those whom he's blackmailing. Whom unknown to both Spring & Bishop Dominique already got her hands on!****SPOILERS***** The film goes on an on with a number of mindless sub-plots about nothing that makes any sense at all and ends with the hero, who's desperately trying to stay awake, Dave Bishop taking off not with the girl,Brita Lindquist, but the man who's sworn to murder him Jonhatan Spring into the sunset or, like at the end of the movie, moon-set. Robert Mitchum being as popular as he was back then just had to sleepwalk, which he did an excellent job of, in his part of press agent Dave Bishop to make the movie a smashing success in the box office. But as things turned out the film attended at, back in 1956, a premium $2.50 ticket price barley broke even in the box-office that within two years after its release it was sold to network TV to be seen, for the few who were still interested in seeing it, for free.

Robert Mitchum, employee of a mysterious rich guy with a mysterious source of income, gets involved in FOREIGN INTRIGUE when he seeks out the source of his newly dead employer's seven figure lifestyle on the Riviera. Will the natural scenery of the Riviera, Sweeden and Vienna overwhelm the scenery provided by Bob's bodacious costars? This is an entertaining enough movie -- and would have been a lot better without the atrocious musical score -- but it is slumming for Mitchum, who probably took the role for the free visits to European hotspots. The main interest IS Mitchum, who acts the role in an interesting fashion. By acting, in each scene, that he just can't quite believe the mother lode of BS that he has just been handed by some suspect, spy type, cute girl, or plot development, he sort of steps aside from the move, and whispers to us that he knows this is all nonsense, but bear with him, the movie won't be too bad. And, because he does that, it really isn't.Now, frankly, this is a dead-end as an acting approach, and the cul-de-sac at the end is Roger Moore at the close of his James Bond period. But it works for this movie and this actor, where a straighter approach probably just would have failed. We should be grateful, though, that a sequel, suggested by the ending, was not produced.

The story for this film is lame and uninteresting. A bunch of Nazi double agents are going to be exposed 10 years after the war.. The writer(s) obviously didn't know much about neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland...why would Hitler have picked one man to seize power in those countries? These countries were neutral and made no difference to the war. In any case how could one man per country seize power or make any difference at all...it is all so incredibly stupid.This film is bad... after about a half hour I was ready to pull the plug...but didn't. It is richly filmed and might make a good travelogue but what a bunch of lousy writing and directing.There is no intrigue in Foreign Intrigue...everything is listless with some sort of jazz sound track completely incongruent to the action... Even the Swedish girl falling in love with Michell is flat and unconvincing... maybe she is a bad actress or was badly directed? BOTH! Robert Mitchum cruises through the film on Valium with his eyes half shut.Avoid this movie!

Saw it at a drive in movie in Phoenix on a rainy night (which is pretty rare for Phoenix). I think that environment added to the feeling "intrigue". It was the first spy movie I ever saw. The plot was complex and engaging. What added significantly to the feeling of the movie was the use of the bongos beating alone before the strings began a haunting theme in the film score.