Years after letting a World War II art thief (George Macready) escape from his watch, down-on-his-luck American solider Michael Blake (Glenn Ford) returns to France to search for the man’s hidden loot — a glove studded with emeralds. In Paris, Blake teams up with a pretty tour guide named Christine (Geraldine Brooks), and together they set off on a thrilling race to find the precious religious artifact before it winds up in the wrong hands.
Rudolph Maté (1898-1964) became an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda in Hungarian films of the late teens. In the mid ‘20s he lensed some of Carl Dreyer’s Mika’l, and became cinematographer for Dreyer’s classics La Passion De Jeanne D’Arc and Vampyr. After working in France on Fritz Lang’s Liliom and Rene Clair’s Le Dernier Milliardaire, Mate came to Hollywood in 1935. Here he shot such notable films as Our Relations with Laurel and Hardy, William Wyler’s Dodsworth, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, Korda’s That Hamilton Woman, and Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be. Mate began directing in 1947 with the comedy It Had to Be You, which he co-directed with Don Hartman. As a director Mate is most fondly remembered for his early films, the noirs The Dark Past and D.O.A., and producer George Pal’s apocalyptic science-fictioner When Worlds Collide. —allmovie guide