Arch of Triumph

Paris 1938, city of last resort for the stateless, including a surgeon (Boyer) whose obsession with a Nazi sadist (Laughton) leaves him vulnerable to deportation and ill-prepared for romance with Ingrid Bergman. The original Remarque novel is too hefty to fit into two hours screentime, and if Milestone chooses to focus on the tale of the doctor's revenge and his doomed romance, he also breathes life into an assembly of supporting roles: concierge, café proprietor, a general reduced to night-club doorman, none of whom is played for comic relief. Bergman seems out of place as an Italian/Romanian good-time girl, but Russell Metty gives harsh light and inky shadow to seedy hotel rooms we'll see again in Touch of Evil ten years on.