There have been a lot of movies with this title, including at least two in the last 12 years. Guess it's an easy title.
This version is about Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford, who are interrupted on the first night of their honeymoon by the British Foreign Service. They're to go to France and find a man, who will give them a clue to find another man in Austria who will tell them what people they can trust. Problem being, they don't know who any of these men are, so it turns into one of those games of wearing hats with roses on them and repeating certain phrases at certain times while spilling a glass of wine.
That goes about as smoothly as you'd expect, although the movie plays it as awkward more than funny. Joan Crawford repeating this same thing to three people in a row until it's the right person. Which definitely wouldn't be suspicious! They reach a bookstore they're seeking in Salzburg, but the first person they ask for a specific book has no idea what they're talking about. MacMurray meets the guy they're looking for, but I think misses the code phrase and so the guy doesn't identify himself.
The movie never really feels tense, though. Maybe at the very end, when Crawford actually gets captured by the Nazis, but until then there's never a time where it feels like they're really in danger of being discovered. But the movie's not trying to play their missteps as comedy, so it's not really funny. And they spend so much time on the code words and whatnot it doesn't leave much time for any sort of romantic interplay or banter between MacMurray and Crawford.
The movie is just sort of there. Not tense, not funny, not sweet or cute. It's got Basil Rathbone in it as a German count that went to college with MacMurray, but it doesn't give him a lot to do. It feels like the movie meanders to a conclusion along the dullest path possible.
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