Errol Flynn’s first Hollywood film for a while starts promisingly with some gorgeous technicolour shots of Istanbul from a plane as Errol flies into town. He meets some old friends – a suspicious police detective and a black nightclub singer (Nat King Col, singing ‘When I Fall In Love”) – and when the song triggers a flashback you’ll start thinking “that’s a bit like Casablanca”… a comparison only reinforced when the flashback reveals he romanced a Ingrid Bergman-like German (Cornell Borchers), and Errol plays an adventurer (a pilot)
Errol wants to marry Boucher and gets involved in some shady jewel shenanigans – then he thinks that the girl is dead. Then she turns up with a new husband and amnesia – at which point the film goes off the rails. It’s far too much of a coincidence for the girl to turn up at the same time, and there’s not a lot of emotional power in the scenes between Errol and the girl (because she doesn’t remember him) and the stolen jewels plot gets dull. The writers commit the unforgivable script flaw of actually resolve the jewel plot and killing the baddie with ten minutes to go… leaving ten minutes of boring amnesia stuff. The girl gets her memory back and races to the airport… but Errol has gotten the plane. But then the plane goes back. Like who cares?
This lacks a name support cast - though to be fair the bunch they’ve got acquit themselves pretty well, including Leif Erickson, Nat King Cole and Colonel Klink from Hogans Heroes. A more serious flaw is it doesn’t really exploit its location, either in terms of story or production value (most of it was shot in Hollywood; location footage is limited to a bit at the beginning). (cf The original version of this – the 1947 film Singapore – where the lead couple were torn apart via the invasion of Singapore.)
There’s also a not very funny subplot about an annoying American couple where the wife is a flirt – he winds up giving her a black eye at the end and we’re supposed to find it funny.
It’s a real shame since I’m partial to melodramas about pilots set in exotic corners of the globe. The script is based on a story by Seton I Miller who wrote some of Errol’s best movies (and also the Alan Ladd potboiler Calcutta, about a pilot in an exotic city) - but there are other names on the credits too so maybe the mess that is the script isn’t his fault. I enjoyed Errol’s performance. He’s obviously a fading beauty, and in some scenes slurs a little, but he’s also smooth and has sad eyes that give depth to his part.
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