Across the Pacific (1942)

The landscape for classic DVDs has improved dramatically in the past couple of years, with many old films which I have never seen (but always wanted to) finally being released. This trend combined with mail-service DVD providers like Netflix (a lifesaver in a town where the local cable line-up inexplicably does not include Turner Classic Movies and the video stores have non-existent to negligible classics sections) means that older films that were hard or impossible to find mere years ago are now readily available. A case in point – the many lesser-known Bogart classics that have been released in the past year or two.  While I have seen all of the bonafide Bogart classics and even many of the not-so-classics, there always remained those elusive few films that I wanted to see but simply could not find anywhere. Admittedly, Humphrey Bogart made some bad films, which he was quick to admit himself, but some of his films that one never hears about are actually quite good (such is the case with Conflict, which I was pleased to discover a couple years back). At any rate, this is just a longwinded way of introducing the fact that this past weekend I finally got to see Across the Pacific, Bogart’s 1942 action piece which I never could find before on the shelves of my local video store.

Not only did Across the Pacific come out the year following The Maltese Falcon, but it also reunited much of the cast, which probably somewhat appeased those Warner executives who were pushing at the time for a Falcon sequel. Like its predecessor, Across the Pacific was directed by John Huston and starred Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet. Bogart plays Rick Leland, an artilleryman who, following his dishonorable discharge from the army, boards a boat heading to Asia to try his luck finding work with the military there. Also aboard the boat are Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet) and Alberta Marlow (Astor), both of whom seem to be harboring secret motives as to why they’re taking the voyage, as is the crew and even Leland himself. When the boat gets delayed at the Panama Canal, these secrets start coming out and a tale of international intrigue unfolds.

Across the Pacific is a fairly standard wartime action film. The story, while it keeps you guessing, is not overly complex, and there’s not a great deal of depth to the characters. All the same, it’s a fairly exciting, interesting story that takes you to exotic locales, and the acting, as would be expected from such a cast, is excellent. Astor and Bogart do well together, and the dialogue between the two has much more comedy than you find in a typical Bogie drama.

I was somewhat apprehensive going into the film about how it would portray Asian-Americans, considering that it was released so soon after Pearl Harbor. Indeed, one of the passengers, Joe Totsuiko, is a Japanese-American who has completely adapted and assimilated a western way of life, yet secretly is plotting against the U.S. and its allies. Such a characterization seems to reflect a wartime fear of an enemy hiding in our midst (it is interesting to note that Warner had to hire almost all Chinese-American actors to play the parts of the Japanese crew). However, besides this rather notable exception, the film shuns stereotypical portrayals and overall has a fairly balanced view of Asian Americans.

There is some interesting trivia surrounding this film, including how John Huston had to leave to join the Signal Corps before the end of filming had taken place. The Hollywood legend has it that he abruptly left the studio at the point in the script where Bogie was being held seemingly helpless at gunpoint and told his replacement director, Vincent Herman, to figure out a way to get him out of the mess (most today agree this is likely just a myth). Even more interesting is the reason why they had to change a major plot point partway through filming (I don’t want to spoil parts of the film, but you can find it listed on the film’s IMDB trivia page).

I would not really call Across the Pacific a top-flight classic, but it’s a pretty solid film. I found this link to an original New York Times review of the film in 1942. It’s a positive review from a prominent publication, indicating that the film was likely somewhat well received, but for some reason, you hardly hear anything about this piece anymore. It just goes to show that old movies are so much more than just those few classics you always hear about. I’m excited that films like this are once again becoming readily available for a new generation to enjoy.

Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)

Sports are often viewed as a metaphor for life - the field or arena becoming a theater where the rise and fall of individual athletes represent the broader victories and defeats of the human spirit. Perhaps more than most sports, boxing is particularly appropriate for staging such dramas. Between a talented fighter’s meteoric climbing in the rankings to his just-as-sudden fall, an entire gamut of human emotions is explored. A boxer’s career can almost be seen as a microcosmic view of a human life, which is why films showing an aged fighter having to hang up the gloves can be so extraordinarily moving and sad. Requiem for a Heavyweight is just such a film.

In Requiem, Anthony Quinn plays Mountain Rivera, a washed-up heavyweight whose cumulative injuries force him into retirement. A requiem, of course, is a ceremony of mass in honor of the dead, and sure enough, Mountain’s life is effectively over when he steps out of the ring. Trying to start over, Mountain finds himself ill-prepared for life outside the squared circle, having little education and no employment history. Mountain says a few times throughout the film he was “almost heavyweight champion of the world” – quite the accomplishment, but such near successes do little for him now. When he goes to visit an employment agency, for example, after he discusses his background and how he was once ranked fifth in the heavyweight division, the sympathetic employment agent tries politely to tell him that they have had success finding job placements for disabled veterans and others with “special needs.”

In a way, it is the metaphorical nature of sports that handicaps Mountain so much – i.e., even though the sports world is like the normal everyday world, it is, in fact, quite different. The statistical accomplishments and rise in the rankings he experienced in the one world simply don’t translate into anything significant in the other. Not only that, but the code which his boxing life has instilled in him – that which makes him unquestionably loyal to his manager, Maish (played by Jackie Gleason), and which prevented him in seventeen years from ever once taking a dive - is so deeply ingrained that in his new life it seems at odds with his sense of self-preservation, and his blind devotion to Maish puts him in a position where he stands to be taken advantage of. It is Mountain’s discovery that this code is now meaningless outside of boxing, more so than his forced retirement from the ring, that really hammers the proverbial nail in the coffin and ends that chapter of his life for good. 

You’ll find a lot of rave reviews of this film. While I thought it was good, I must admit I’m a bit puzzled by the strength and consistency of its many accolades. The cast is the best part of the film, with a number of underrated actors – Anthony Quinn, Julie Harris, Jackie Gleason, and Mickey Rooney – giving wonderful dramatic performances. However, despite the quality of the acting, something just seemed a little off to me. I think this might have something to do with its television origins. It was originally done live as a play on CBS Playhouse. Rod Serling, of The Twilight Zone fame, wrote both the original teleplay and the film adaptation. Director Ralph Nelson had also worked primarily with TV. And in a way, Requiem, felt more like an hour-and-a-half TV show than it did a feature film. The characters had a real TV feel to them. They were more allegorical and less dynamic than you would expect in a film of this sort, without a great deal of development occurring until the very end of the film. Nonetheless, it is a heartfelt, well acted piece, and that alone is enough to warrant a viewing.

Dark Water (2005)

With rare exception, I think remakes are a bad idea. Having said that, I think that some of the remakes of J-horror films in recent years, such as The Ring and The Grudge, have equaled, and arguably even surpassed, the originals. This is likely due, at least in part, to the way these films did not deviate far from their predecessors; they mostly just made moderate alterations to accommodate for the cultural differences between American and Japanese audiences. Thus, it was not without hope that I decided to watch the 2005 American remake of the 2002 Japanese film, Dark Water.

Sure enough, the American version remained somewhat faithful to the original version, but I was disappointed to find that the changes that were made, small as they were, noticably changed the focus of the film and overall were for the worse. As I mentioned in my review of the 2002 version, the original film is not without its flaws, particularly in its pacing. Presumably in an attempt to fix this, the American version added several more visceral scenes to enhance the film’s creepy atmosphere and emphasized more strongly the protaganist’s (played by Jennifer Connelly) troubled past and fragile psychological state. This emphasis takes the focus away from the emotional connection between the mother and the daughter, which is what really made the original film engaging and different. Without this emotional charge, you’re left with a film that’s rather nondescript and ordinary (although I will mention that John C. Reilly and Tim Roth both do well in their supporting roles). The American version also attempts to tie up many of the loose ends that were left undone in the original’s storyline, which only takes away from the haunting, unsettled feeling the first film did a pretty decent job of creating.

The American remake of Dark Water isn’t bad. It’s just that the original Japanese version wasn’t perfect either, even though I did like it a lot. There’s probably no real reason to check out both films, so if you’re going to see one, you might as well see the better one and watch the Japanese version. The features that distinguish it from the remake make it a much more interesting film.