This is the first time I've seen this in many years. The first time, the people I lived with loved it so fiercely they bought a long-playing record of the calliopean musical score and they played it a thousand times in a row. And, boy, is the film scored. Hardly a moment passes without bongo drums pounding and violins throbbing. Rita Hayworth gets to do what I hope was her last dance number on film. On hearing the melody behind the opening credits I was whisked back to San Bruno, California, with the instruments inside my head.
Once over that initial spasm, though, I was able to get into the film and saw it a little differently than I had the first time. Mitchum is a creep, true, but not the unmitigated son of bitch that I'd first thought. Now -- with so much more experience -- I can even consider the proposition that by betraying Jack Lemmon to the authorities and stealing Hayworth away from Lemmon -- he was actually doing the younger, more innocent man, a favor.
Briefly, the story is that Mitchum and Lemmon are partners in an old boat in the Caribbean and engage in small-time smuggling for a living. When their cargo on one trip turns out to be Rita Hayworth, Lemmon falls for her, but Mitchum is able to see that this is a mismatch made in Heaven. Lemmon is all Ga Ga and wants to marry her and Hayworth, a lady with no country but lots of history, is desperate enough to accept. Mitchum short circuits the plan through devious means. The direction is sometimes misguided. Lemmon and Mitchum have a fist fight aboard the boat, which Jimmy Jean interprets as "working off some steam," but it's too brutal. In the end, Lemmon is trapped aboard a small freighter about to blow up and is saved by Mitchum. The incident is anything but typical Hollywood heroism -- and those last twenty minutes are genuinely gripping. The denouement in the tavern is simply unbelievable.
The screenplay is by Irwin Shaw and, though some of the dialog is surely from the novel, it has its felicities. When Lemmon first proposes marriage, Hayworth tries to explain to him why it wouldn't work. It's a cue for a dull speech, but it's very neatly done, and with aspirations. "I've been debased," she tells him. "Armies have marched over me." It doesn't make a dent in Lemon's erotic mania, a nice college kid from Indianapolis. The narrative ribbon occasionally scintillates with such almost subliminal sequins.
The location shooting is expertly done. This isn't Montego Bay with its meticulously placed palms and pina coladas served by native girls in flowered dresses. This is the seamier side of Trinidad and Tobago, where the houses are slapped together of weather-beaten boards, the streets are littered with banana peels, and the beds in the seedy hotels are probably harboring bugs. The T shirts are dirty and soggy with sweat. You want a drink? Fine -- here's a bottle. It's a long way from the old studio productions with the men in white suits and panama hats and colorful but sanitary interiors veiled by beaded curtains.
This isn't one of Mitchum's more impressive performances but he seems sober and hits his marks and says what he's supposed to, even while bleary eyed with rum and listening to a 78 record of Mozart on a wind-up phonograph. In life, Jack Lemmon was a nice guy, not erratic like Mitchum, but I've always thought he was better at comedy than drama. Rita Hayworth's performance is a blank. Her expression seem pasted on like a postage stamp. This must have been one of her last movies before she began to self destruct. The supporting players are just fine -- Bernard Lee as a quietly empathic doctor, Edric Connor with his jumbo baritone. Mitchum asks Connor, "Do you want to quit, Jimmy Jean?" And Connor stares back intently for a moment before replying, "I do believe I do."
Once over that initial spasm, though, I was able to get into the film and saw it a little differently than I had the first time. Mitchum is a creep, true, but not the unmitigated son of bitch that I'd first thought. Now -- with so much more experience -- I can even consider the proposition that by betraying Jack Lemmon to the authorities and stealing Hayworth away from Lemmon -- he was actually doing the younger, more innocent man, a favor.
Briefly, the story is that Mitchum and Lemmon are partners in an old boat in the Caribbean and engage in small-time smuggling for a living. When their cargo on one trip turns out to be Rita Hayworth, Lemmon falls for her, but Mitchum is able to see that this is a mismatch made in Heaven. Lemmon is all Ga Ga and wants to marry her and Hayworth, a lady with no country but lots of history, is desperate enough to accept. Mitchum short circuits the plan through devious means. The direction is sometimes misguided. Lemmon and Mitchum have a fist fight aboard the boat, which Jimmy Jean interprets as "working off some steam," but it's too brutal. In the end, Lemmon is trapped aboard a small freighter about to blow up and is saved by Mitchum. The incident is anything but typical Hollywood heroism -- and those last twenty minutes are genuinely gripping. The denouement in the tavern is simply unbelievable.
The screenplay is by Irwin Shaw and, though some of the dialog is surely from the novel, it has its felicities. When Lemmon first proposes marriage, Hayworth tries to explain to him why it wouldn't work. It's a cue for a dull speech, but it's very neatly done, and with aspirations. "I've been debased," she tells him. "Armies have marched over me." It doesn't make a dent in Lemon's erotic mania, a nice college kid from Indianapolis. The narrative ribbon occasionally scintillates with such almost subliminal sequins.
The location shooting is expertly done. This isn't Montego Bay with its meticulously placed palms and pina coladas served by native girls in flowered dresses. This is the seamier side of Trinidad and Tobago, where the houses are slapped together of weather-beaten boards, the streets are littered with banana peels, and the beds in the seedy hotels are probably harboring bugs. The T shirts are dirty and soggy with sweat. You want a drink? Fine -- here's a bottle. It's a long way from the old studio productions with the men in white suits and panama hats and colorful but sanitary interiors veiled by beaded curtains.
This isn't one of Mitchum's more impressive performances but he seems sober and hits his marks and says what he's supposed to, even while bleary eyed with rum and listening to a 78 record of Mozart on a wind-up phonograph. In life, Jack Lemmon was a nice guy, not erratic like Mitchum, but I've always thought he was better at comedy than drama. Rita Hayworth's performance is a blank. Her expression seem pasted on like a postage stamp. This must have been one of her last movies before she began to self destruct. The supporting players are just fine -- Bernard Lee as a quietly empathic doctor, Edric Connor with his jumbo baritone. Mitchum asks Connor, "Do you want to quit, Jimmy Jean?" And Connor stares back intently for a moment before replying, "I do believe I do."