***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 does not seem to be concerned about the situation .Ingrid Thulin (spelled Tulean (sic))does ,but it is a far cry from Bergman and Visconti.Genevieve Page is French and her best part in an English language movie is still to come : "the private life of Sherlock Holmes" by Billy Wilder.Another French thespian ,Jean Galland,has nothing to say and dies in the first sequence before collecting his money.The plot is complicated and undecipherable .Most of the time,we do not know why those people are bustling about and what they are looking for.When we understand the story deals with blackmail and former Nazis ,it's too late.Take "L'Affaire Nina B" by Robert Siodmak (1961) instead.That director knew what he was talking about.

This is my idea, as a writer, of a great ethical mystery. The intelligent narrative tells the story of an American working for a mysterious and very wealthy man named Victor Danemore. One day at his estate on the French Riviera, the great man, played by Jean Galland, dies. Robert Mitchum as Dave, the assistant, goes to the man's wife, lovely Genevive Page, for information; she knows nothing either. His odyssey to try to find out what he needs to know about his mysterious employer leads him to Vienna and to Stockholm--and finally to the fact that Danemore had been blackmailing Nazi collaborators who were afraid their wartime crimes would be discovered. At the end, having been saved narrowly from the bad guys, who are actually good guys testing his ethics, he goes off to seek out the real ex-Nazi collaborator bad guys in as many countries as he must; by then the lovely young woman he has fallen in love with, Ingrid Thulin (brilliant as always) is going to be waiting for him. This is a project conceived by Sheldon Reynolds, who wrote the script along with Gene Levitt and Harold Jack Bloom and also directed this fascinating movie. He was also the mind behind another Euro-American on-location project, "Dateline:Europe", one of the best half-hour TV series of all time,one which utilized (as this feature movie) does European technicians, actors, locations and artists. (When people talk about " the sorts of movies 'they' used to make and don't or can't any more", this is the sort of international, intelligent, adult and well-scripted film to which the disappointed are referring). The music here by Paul Durand is good, the cinematography by Bertil Palmgren frequently stunning. The piece also has many actors in small but telling parts, including Inga Tingblad as Thulin's mother, George Hubert, Frederick Schreidler, etc. They are all professional and exactly right for their parts; and all the parts contribute to a whole that moves with the inexorability of a tide toward a satisfying climax and an unforgettable ending. A personal favorite.

A wealthy industrialist dies of a heart attack.His closest employee (Robert Mitchum) suspects foul play when strangers take a too keen interest in his death.He starts digging into his employers past,which leads him through most of Europe.Suddenly the most peculiar persons are interested in his detective work,even the CIA and British Intelligence.A good spy yarn with a complex plot.Not a good film but always interesting.