Reign of Terror (1949)

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A gorgeous dramatization of the French revolution in its dying phase with all the leaders going down, Danton, Robespierre and St. Just, with Robert Cummings as a kind if French pimpernel working for Lafayette to unsettle the revolutionary establishment that has derailed into terror. It's a marvellous intrigue, with a beautiful lady at the centre, of course, and with some great acting that should be noted, especially Richard Baseheart (!) as Robespierre - it's impossible to recognize him. Can you see Captain Ahab's number one Starbuck or Fellini's jester in La Strada in this Robespierre? Equally outstanding is Arnold Moss as Fouché, oiling his ways into and out of intrigues and finally facing Napoleon. To all this comes a terrific score by Saul Kaplan. It's almost expressionistic and gives a very sharp impression of the drama of the French revolution.What then is failing? It's just slightly out of any realism. It's too adventurous, too much turned into an artificial thriller, and unfortunastely Jess Barker is totally miscast as St. Just - he is not convincing at all, and St.Just was not like that. He was an effeminate dandy and no soldier.Still, it's a brilliant film with terrific action all the way, that can't disappoint anyone.

I'd love to be able to give this film a higher rating, because I'm sure it's excellent. Unfortunately, the disc I have of this is a very poor print, and the dialogue was so fuzzy I missed a lot of it."Reign of Terror" is a 1949 film directed by Anthony Mann and stars Robert Cummings and Arlene Dahl.The time is May 1794. Robespierre (Richard Basehart) wants to become dictator of France. Supposedly he has a black book containing the names of his enemies, all of which he plans on destroying. The book is missing. He brings in a man named Duval to help find it. Duval, however, has been replaced by Charles D'Aubigny, a patriot who wants to bring down Robespierre.This filmed moved quickly, and Cummings and Dahl certainly made an attractive couple. She was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood - you can even see that through a lousy print. Cummings would go on to huge success in television; as a film star, he was a second stringer at best, always likable, but probably better suited to comedy. However, under Mann's direction, he does a good job.Basehart is wonderful as Robespierre, and Arnold Moss, who looks like he could have been Adrien Brody's father, is an effective Fouche, who became later the head of Napoleon's secret police.France continued to have a tough time after the monarchy was brought down. Robespierre was a complicated person with high ideals, but he used terrorism to achieve them.

It's funny to watch how Hollywood treats French history .Historically this terror evocation leaves a lot to be desired .Nothing for instance concerns the reason why the terror was instituted:at the time the country had to fight two enemies :the foreign countries and the royalists .At the beginning ,the terror was "useful" ,although they killed a lot of innocents (including the genius Lavoisier who virtually invented chemistry ,the poet Chénier and the suffragette Olympe de Gouges ,one of the first women to claim sexual equality).In the movie,Barras ,who played a prominent part in the fall of RObespierre has a minor part ,except in the final scenes .Instead we have a chivalrous noble (Robert Cummings) and his gorgeous mistress Madelon (Arlene Dahl).For good measure they hint at the unfortunate late Marie-Antoinette and Bonaparte appears in the flesh towards the end ,as the messiah (?).PLus "La Carmagnole" "AH CA Ira! and ,all the same ,"La Marseillaise " (earlier "Le Chant Des Marseillais" ) which was at the time a revolutionary song.They seem to promise a brighter future if we are to believe the screenwriters Take it for what it is :pure entertainment and forget French history!

Slice into Arnold Moss's Inspector Fouche and you'd get an oily spill bigger than BP's. It's a great tongue-in-cheek performance, about as charmingly slimy as they come. Now, I've read several books on the French Revolution, but there are a bunch of things I learned from this supremely stylish film (Anthony Mann). Mainly, that The Terror occurred at night in noirish lighting (John Alton) with a great supporting cast of Basehart, Moss, Lloyd and McGraw; that the art guy who designed Paris (Cameron Menzies) cast all sorts of nightmarish shadows over the city; and that not even a well-meaning lightweight like Robert Cummings could spoil these inspired events. As a result, the movie is a visual Terror that really fires up the imagination, history books or no.But I especially love it when that bewigged fop Robespierre is led into the Assembly near the end, and this raucous wall of faces fills the screen. Right away you know somebody's in big trouble. Now I also know why the real Assembly was nicknamed "the mountain", though "volcano" might be more accurate here. And catch that great silhouetted shot of the farmhouse during the chase, like nothing I've seen since the equally unique Night of the Hunter (1955). In fact, almost every frame features a compelling visual of one kind or another. Without doubt, the 90-minutes is one of the weird glories of B-movie noir; at the same time, ace producer Walter Wanger should be congratulated for assembling such an outstanding production crew and supporting cast, (I'm assuming the two leads Cummings and Dahl were concessions to Hollywood commercialism).Anyhow the movie scared the daylights out of me as a kid, and now, impresses the heck out of me as a geezer.