Main Cast: Gwili Andre, Frank Morgan, Gregory Ratoff, Murray Kinnell, John Warburton
Release Year: 1932
Country: US
Run Time: 59 minutes
Plot
A Parisian flower girl is trotted out as the missing Grand Duchess Anastasia in this fast-moving thriller based on a popular newspaper serial, Secrets of the French Sureté. Discovered by evil White Russian Count Moloff (Gregory Ratoff), Eugénie Dorain (Gwili Andre) is hypnotized into believing that she is Anastasia, the daughter of the slain Russian czar. Léon Renault, the girl's fiancé, aligns himself with Francis St. Cyr (Frank Morgan) and the famous Sureté Français detective Bertillon (Murray Kinnell), but is too late to save Réna (Kendall Lee), Moloff's mistress, who is embalmed alive in cement. A Russian Grand Duke (Arnold Korff), who doubted Eugénie's veracity, is summarily killed when his limousine is forced off the road, and, having outlived her usefulness, Eugénie is about to suffer the same fate as Réna when St. Cyr and the police arrive like the proverbial cavalry. The evil Moloff is electrocuted by one of his own fiendish devices and Eugénie and Léon are finally free to plan a future together. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Review
Secrets of the French Police was designed by producer David O. Selznick to showcase Gwili Andre, a ravishingly beautiful model from Denmark, whom he hoped would become another Greta Garbo. That, needless to say, didn't happen -- Andre was perhaps the least accomplished of the era's European imports -- but the film ended up belonging squarely to its villain, Gregory Ratoff. A dialect comedian and an accomplished director in his own right, Ratoff tears into his assignment with appropriate gusto. It is a marvelous performance and although Ratoff doesn't rank alongside Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lionel Atwill in the bogeyman sweepstakes, Secrets of the French Police would have been poorer without his presence. British actor John Warburton made his American screen debut as the nominal hero (having replaced Rod LaRoque and Nils Asther, both victims of a rampant influenza epidemic), and is a fine, upstanding hero, and Frank Morgan, sans his usual befuddlement, has fun playing it straight for a change. Although clearly a potboiler and despite the miscasting of Miss Andre, Secrets of the French Police deserves to be better known today than it is. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Carroll Clark - Art Director, Edward Sutherland - Director, Max Steiner - Composer (Music Score), Alfred Gilks - Cinematographer, Samuel Ornitz - Screen Story, Samuel Ornitz - Screenwriter, Robert Tasker - Screenwriter, H. Ashton-Wolfe - Short Story Author
