A Scandal in Paris

Career criminals stretch out laidback in prison, as a fortuitous cake emerges, celebrations encoding style.

Having escaped they seek anonymity upon the open road, yet lend their images to a portrait depicting extant legend.

Soon they're reunited with Emile Vernet's (Akim Tamiroff) large outlaw family, who fears for their hard fought freedom, and recommends they join the army.

False identities are procured and they set off to aid Napoleon, still noticing jewels along the way whose brilliance generates temptation.

Years later they've left the service yet still scorn an honest living, and find themselves sheltered in a lavish chateau, presided over by the Minister of Police (Alan Napier as Houdon de Pierremont). 

They decide to rob him anyway and enact an audacious plan, switching the location of the jewels through agnostic sleight of hand.

The Prefect of Police (Gene Lockhart) cannot discover them and is relieved of duty, but Eugéne Vidocq (George Sanders) knows their whereabouts and leads the Minister straight indubitably. 

For his exceptional deductive skill he's generously rewarded, and given the post of Prefect of Police, securing Vernet's relatives jobs thereafter, at the bustling Bank of Paris. 

But his identity remains known to at least 2 adoring love interests, who fortunately enjoy his company, and seek not his instant ruin.

A Scandal in Paris invests striking charm with bewitching clever schematics, which assuage freeform displacements as a matter of upright cause.

Taking things too seriously is not so subtly critiqued throughout, even if Vidocq must watch his back as he nimbly cascades clout.

It seems too farfetched to believe yet is at least partially verifiable, taken from Vidocq's very own memoirs, the validity of which I cannot speak to.

He understood people well no doubt, a master of effortless seduction, freely winning hearts and minds through open-minded grand induction.

Those lacking social graces or appealing fanned conceit, fell swiftly to his daring bold and animate spry feats.

There's a series here within these reels commanding grand detection, each episode a marigold shy intimate selection.

Why not engage a stunning sleuth who once lacked honest virtue, to come to terms with pachyderms investigate the Dooku?

A stunning tale lightly regaled the shocking fluent candour, a charméd life akin to strife concocting goose and gander. 

Flavour.

What a life.