Except for easy-going traveling salesman William Bendix (if he is a salesman), the level of insolence hits the roof in this entertaining slice of intrigue & nonsense, Josef von Sternberg’s last commercial work.* Jane Russell (with her wide-set eyes & narrow nose) meets-cute with a hunky Robert Mitchum on a slow boat away from China, sailing toward shady Brad Dexter’s nightclub. Everybody’s got a past they're avoiding in this one (other than Dexter gal Gloria Grahame, she just wanted to avoid making the pic!), but they’re safe as long as they stay inside Macao’s 3-Mile sovereignty limit. Von Sternberg piles on artificial atmosphere, revisiting visual ideas from the glory days of SHANGHAI EXPRESS/’32, though Russell is no objet d’art Marlene Dietrich type. And exactly how much of the film was his remains under debate. Sternberg writes the film off in FUN IN A CHINESE LAUNDRY, his autobio, and Grahame’s then-husband Nicholas Ray apparently did quite a few scenes. But it mostly looks like Sternberg. All those nets! And what it is misses in narrative cohesion, it makes up in bravura composition and spark-laden relationships. Fun!
DOUBLE-BILL: The success of HIS KIND OF WOMAN/’52, with Russell & Mitchum going thru similar, if less anarchic, motions in Mexico (watching as Vincent Price steals the pic), led to this second helping of empty calories.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *JvS made one more film (the little seen/experimental ANATAHAN/’53) while JET PILOT, shot in ‘49, got held back till 1957.
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