Anne of the Indies (1951)

Anne of the Indies is a 1951 Twentieth Century Fox pirate adventure movie directed by Jacques Tourneur. It belongs to the small sub-genre of movies about lady pirates. It may have been inspired by the adventures of the real-life woman pirate Anne Bonny (the time period is exactly right) but in fact the story has little connection with that lady’s career. The main similarity is that the pirate in the film is, like Anne Bonny, Irish.

The pirate Captain Providence has been preying, very successfully, on English shipping. He’s a mystery man. No-one has set eyes on him and lived to tell the tale. When he captures a merchant ship he has the whole crew put to death. As a result no-one knows that Captain Providence is a woman. She is Captain Anne Providence (Jean Peters).

Captain Providence has captured another merchantman. As her men are feeding the luckless merchantman’s crew to the sharks she notices a man in irons. This interests her. He is a Frenchman who claims to be a prisoner of the English. Anne hates the English but her attitude is that this Frenchman is an enemy of the English and that makes him an OK guy. No member of her crew would dare to suggest that she may have spared his life because he’s young and very handsome.

The Frenchman (played by Louis Jourdan who was a major heart-throb at the time) calls himself Pierre François. Anne isn’t a total fool. She has his cabin searched. A map is found. Or at least it’s half a map, a map showing the location of fabulous treasure buried by the famous buccaneer Henry Morgan. Anne is extremely interested when Pierre reveals that he knows how to find the other half of the map.

The lust for gold is not the only lust consuming Captain Anne Providence. This Frenchman excites her in a strange and unfamiliar way. The way a woman can be excited by a very good-looking very masculine man who knows how to romance women.

This causes a falling out with Anne’s mentor, the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

Blackbeard is fond of Anne but he’s not a forgiving man.

Whether you’re seeking treasure or love you always have to look out for hidden reefs and other hazards of the sea and that’s the case here. In fact seeking for love is a lot more dangerous than seeking for gold.

Of course there are many complications and twists to come. There is only one member of her crew whom Anne might be able to consider a friend and confidant, the drunken cynical ship’s doctor, Jameson (Herbert Marshall). He is worried about the situation. Her boisterous Scottish first mate Red Dougal (James Robertson Justice) doesn’t trust Pierre. But Anne can’t keep her hands off the handsome Frenchman.

Betrayal could come from any number of sources. It’s doubtful whether any of the characters in this tale could be described as honest upstanding citizens.

Of course there’s another woman, Molly (Debra Paget). I won’t spoil things by revealing where she fits into the plot but you’re probably going to guess that she and Anne are not going to get along.

There’s an extraordinary anti-English bias to this movie. Anne considers the English to be treacherous, cruel and wholly untrustworthy and she turns out to be right.

Anne Providence makes an interesting heroine. She’s brave, sexy, daring and quite sympathetic but there is the minor point that we have already seen her commit mass murder. I like the spirited performance of Jean Peters and she’s able to make Anne both wicked and sympathetic. Anne is a ruthless pirate but she’s a woman and Pierre has made her very much aware of that. Peters makes Anne a real woman who reacts in a believable way to emotional betrayal. Peters also makes us aware that Anne is a woman with sexual feelings.

Louis Jourdan, James Robertson Justice and Debra Paget are fine in their roles but Herbert Marshall is the standout among the supporting players, giving a subtle performance as a man with divided loyalties and a conflicted sense of duty.

There are plenty of nicely executed action scenes and the movie (shot in Technicolor) looks great. I believe some of the sea battle scenes were lifted from earlier Twentieth Century Fox pirate movies.

Anne of the Indies is a surprisingly nuanced pirate adventure with a complex protagonist who doesn’t always do what we expect her to do. The movie as a whole doesn’t adhere rigidly to the conventions of the pirate movie. It’s much more interesting than one expects it to be. In fact this is a terrific pirate movie and certainly the best lady pirate movie ever made. Very highly recommended.

The French Blu-Ray from BQHL offers a lovely transfer and includes the film in English with removable French subtitles, and it includes the movie on DVD as well. A very worthwhile buy.

If you’re interested in lady pirates you might also want to check out the rather entertaining Buccaneer’s Girl (1950).

Circle of Danger (1951)

Circle of Danger is a low-key British mystery thriller about a man trying to learn the truth about his brother’s death.

Clay Douglas (Ray Milland) is a diver who has made a lot of money in the salvage business. Now he’s sold his share of the business and he sets off for Britain to find out what really happened to his brother. His brother had joined the British Army in 1940 and had ended up in the Commandos. He had been killed during an operation behind enemy lines in 1944. During the war Clay, who was then serving in the US Navy, had had a chance encounter with a man named Smithers who had served alongside his brother. Smithers had told Clay something very disturbing - the bullet that killed his brother may not have been a German bullet. His brother may have been murdered.

Clay’s quest to discover the truth takes him from London to a mining town in Wales and from thence to the Highlands of Scotland. Smithers is now dead and in fact most of the men in Clay’s brother’s Commando unit are now dead as well. Finding the few survivors proves to be a frustrating business.

He eventually tracks down his brother’s commanding officer in the Scottish Highlands. Like everyone else he has managed to contact Major McArran (Hugh Sinclair) seems to be curiously reluctant to discuss the matter.

At McArran’s house Clay meets Elspeth Graham (Patricia Roc), a young writer of children’s books. There’s an obvious attraction between them but it’s a romance that runs into an extraordinary number of obstacles, not the least of them being that Major McArran is clearly very interested in Elspeth as well. Clay is certainly keen on Elspeth but his obsession with uncovering the truth about his brother’s death proves to be another obstacle in the path of true love.

Philip Macdonald wrote the screenplay, based on his novel White Heather. The story relies more on suspense and the unravelling of a murder mystery than on conventional thriller elements. It’s very light on action but it is definitely nicely suspenseful. There’s some clever misdirection and some good plot twists as Clay follows up clues that don’t mean what he thinks they mean and don’t lead where he thinks they’re going to lead. The ending is unexpected and at the same time it seems like the only possible ending, which is always  the mark of a well-constructed story.

The love story has no real connection with the main plot but it does serve to lighten the mood and it slows down the plot. This is actually an advantage. This is a slow-burning suspense film and the pacing is deliberately somewhat leisurely.

Jacques Tourneur directed the film and while it’s a lesser effort from a man who is one of the most underrated American directors of his era it’s still a very fine and very well-crafted movie with some very effective use of locations.

Clay Douglas is a man who is dogged in pursuit of anything he decides to go after but Ray Milland plays him as a sympathetic character albeit with just the slightest touch of disturbing obsessiveness. Patricia Roc makes an engaging leading lady. Hugh Sinclair is solid as McArran and the supporting performances are all effective. Marius Goring pretty much steals the picture as Sholto Lewis, a ballet dancer who gives the impression of being the last person you would expect to be a very tough ex-Commando officer but appearances can be deceptive. 

Network’s DVD is typical of the company - it offers virtually nothing in the way of extras but it offers an extremely good transfer at a very reasonable price.

Circle of Danger is a subtle movie that offers few thrills but does offer effective suspense and a good mystery story. It’s a well-made well-acted film that achieves what it sets out to achieve. The location shooting and Marius Goring’s performance are major bonuses. The result is excellent entertainment. Not quite in the same league as Tourneur’s best films but still highly recommended.

Timbuktu (1958)

Jacques Tourneur’s Timbuktu is an old-fashioned adventure movie, in fact it’s even a little old-fashioned by the standards of 1958. That’s probably why I liked it so much.

It’s a French Foreign Legion adventure but it’s set in 1940, against the background of the fall of France. The French colonial garrisons are being stripped in an understandable if ultimately futile attempt to shore up the military collapse in Europe. As a result Colonel Charles Dufort (George Dolenz) faces some serious problems when he takes over the command at Timbuktu. The tribes have taken advantage of the weakening of the garrisons to stage a revolt. Actually the revolt is the brainchild of the ambitious Emir Bhaki (John Dehner) - the ordinary tribesmen are merely being manipulated. The Emir dreams of recreating a mighty empire with himself (naturally) as absolute monarch. In order to unite the people behind his revolt he needs a symbol and that symbol will be the holy man Mahomet Adani. The holy man is pro-French and a man of peace and wants nothing to do with this scheme but the Emir does not intend to give him a choice.

At this point Mike Conway (Victor Mature) arrives on the scene. Conway is an American adventurer whose only loyalty is to money. He has arranged to sell arms to the Emir’s rebels. He has also arranged with the French to betray the Emir. In fact there is absolutely no way of telling which side Conway will eventually choose. He doesn’t know himself. He’s an opportunist and he will wait to see which way the wind is blowing before he makes his choice.

Conway takes a bit of a shine to Colonel Dufort’s beautiful wife Natalie (Yvonne de Carlo). She takes even more of a shine to him. Whether this will influence Conway’s decision as to which side he will betray remains to be seen.

Dufort does not have the option of simply crushing the revolt. His forces are nowhere near strong enough. He will have to rely on guile rather than force. What he really needs to do is to get that holy man out of the clutches of the Emir; if he can do that the revolt will probably collapse. The tricky part is that to rescue the holy man he will need the help of Mike Conway, not really the sort of man you would normally want to trust.

There are the usual plot twists you expect in a movie of this type. Some of the twists fall into the category of hoary old clichés of the genre but in a deliberately old-fashioned adventure movie that’s not necessarily a problem. What matters is whether the film is well executed. And with Jacques Tourneur in the director’s chair that is no problem at all. Timbuktu has plenty of action, some genuine thrills, suspense, romance and intrigue and it looks quite splendid. The action scenes are well-staged and there are some effective visual images (particularly the fate of Captain Girard’s patrol).

It also benefits from a very competent cast. Victor Mature was ideal for such a rôle. Conway is a rogue but he’s a charming rogue and it’s impossible not to like him. He’s also undeniably clever and brave. Mature has the necessary charisma and charm and his performance works extremely well. Yvonne de Carlo does well as Natalie, a woman who is not at all sure what she really wants. George Dolenz is dignified and courageous as the colonel.

It’s John Dehner as the Emir who steals the picture. Dehner relished parts like this and he plays the smooth but ruthless melodrama villain to the hilt.

This movie is notable for its very sympathetic stance towards Islam. The holy man is a courageous and sincere religious leader who happens to think that the Emir’s reckless ambitions will lead his people to disaster. The movie is equally sympathetic towards the French. It wisely avoids trying to lecture us on the evils of colonialism. The holy man expresses the dilemma of colonialism with intelligence and subtlety. Independence might be desirable in many ways but the French have brought prosperity and stability and on balance the French are a better choice than the uncertain and dangerous future offered by the Emir.

Although I’ve described it as a mere adventure film there is a little bit more to it than that, as can be seen by examining the motivations of the four key male characters. Mahomet Adani is an idealist. He’s inflexible, but it’s inflexibility of sincere conviction and he happens to be right. Colonel Dufort is an idealist as well, but he illustrates the dangers of idealism. He’s a good man but on occasions he puts ideals ahead of people. The Emir is a cynical opportunist and he creates the sort of evil and havoc that such men usually create. Mike Conway is also a cynical opportunist but he combines opportunism with a conscience. That makes him a poor opportunist but a much better man. He has at least the possibility of redemption.

MGM’s Limited Edition made-on-demand DVD offers a lovely anamorphic transfer.

Tourneur’s later movies tend to be overshadowed by his early masterpieces like Cat People and Out of the Past. His late 1950s movies such as Timbuktu and The Fearmakers are consequently quite underrated. Timbuktu might be a minor film but it’s a very well-made and thoroughly enjoyable adventure flick. Highly recommended.

The Fearmakers (1958)

Jacques Tourneur first attracted attention as a director as part of Val Lewton horror B-movie unit at RKO in the 40s, helming such classics of subtle horror as Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man before moving on to direct one of the greats of film noir, Out of the Past. His later movies don’t get so much attention, apart from Curse of the Demon (generally recognised as one of the finest horror films ever made). This is a little unfair. His 1957 film noir Nightfall is quite superb. His 1958 film The Fearmakers seems to have fallen through the cracks altogether and that’s a great pity.

The Fearmakers concerns Alan Eaton (Dana Andrews), a Korean War veteran who spent two years being brainwashed in a North Korean prisoner-of-war camp. But while the brainwashing angle is significant it’s not significant in the obvious way you might expect. This film is nothing at all like brainwashing movies such as The Manchurian Candidate.

After being released from a veterans’ hospital Eaton returns to Washington where he is a partner in a public relations firm. On the airliner bound for the capital he encounters Dr Gregory Jessup (Oliver Blake). Jessup tells Eaton he is a nuclear physicist who wants to stop nuclear war. He belongs to an organisation dedicated to doing just that. Everyone wants peace, don’t they? Alan Eaton however is no fool and being in public relations he knows all about the ways people can be manipulated by loaded questions. He is, quite rightly, suspicious of people like Dr Jessup who peddle simply answers for their own ends.

There is a nasty surprise waiting for Eaton is Washington. His partner in the PR business is dead, and the day before he died he sold out the business to the fast-talking rather sleazy Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran). Eaton now has no business to return to, and the money his partner got for the business has disappeared. Eaton is jobless and penniless. Then McGinnis pulls another surprise. Eaton can work for him as a consultant. It will mean a fat salary for very little work.

At this stage Eaton is uneasy about McGinnis but he puts this down to his dislike of pushy fast-talkers. Then he meets reporter Rodney Hillyer (Joel Marston) who suggests that the circumstances of the death of Eaton’s partner were not entirely straightforward. In fact Hillyer suspects murder. And then Eaton has a talk with an old friend, Senator Walder (Roy Gordon), who informs him that McGinnis has attracted a lot of new clients to Eaton’s old firm, and that some of these clients are very unsavoury indeed.

Eaton decides to take up McGinnis’s offer of the consultancy job but his real intention is to do a bit of nosing about. It doesn’t take long for his suspicions to be further aroused. Much of the company’s work has always been in the field of public opinion polling but now the company is doing the polling on behalf of politicians. Eaton has no ethical qualms about using the various techniques of public relations to help sell laundry powders but he finds the idea of using these techniques to sell politicians very unsettling. He’s even more uneasy when he takes a look at some of the polls they’ve conducted. They’re clearly biased and full of loaded questions and various other dubious techniques. It seems his old company is in the business of trying to control public opinion rather than merely measuring it. That’s bad enough but it appears that McGinnis’s shady clients are not just unscrupulous politicians but paid foreign agents. McGinnis is in the business of political propaganda. He’s also linked to organisations, like Dr Jessup’s phony peace group, that are fronts for subversion. There is more than one kind of brainwashing.

It also becomes obvious that taking an excessive interest in McGinnis’s activities can be a dangerous undertaking and not only is Eaton’s life is in danger, he has also unwittingly endangered the life of McGinnis’s secretary Lorraine Dennis (Marilee Earle) who has been helping him in his unofficial investigating.

Tourneur was a director who always managed to be stylish without being obtrusive. He used cinematic tricks sparingly but effectively, the objective being to enhance the story rather than distracting from it. There’s a scene in this film where Alan Eaton is talking on the telephone in his office and Tourneur unexpectedly employs a high-angle shot. It’s not showy but it does rather nicely emphasise that Eaton is in danger of being isolated and marginalised. 

Dana Andrews is a terribly underrated actor. His approach was always low-key and you find yourself so convinced by his characterisations that you don’t notice his acting. And that of course is the whole point of acting. He gives a typically fine performance here. The supporting cast is adequate with Dick Foran as McGinnis making an amusing if not very subtle bad guy.

The Fearmakers is often dismissed a red scare movie which is a complete misunderstanding of the film. In fact it’s nothing of the kind. Some of the bad guys may be foreign agents but others are just common-and-garden crooked politicians. This movie is concerned with the broader issues of manipulation and the ethics of political lobbying in general. Everyone would like to get their point-of-view across to the public. Everyone would like to persuade other people of the quality of their product or the rightness of their opinions. At what point do these things cross the line and become outright propaganda and cynical manipulation? In the 1950s people still had the quaint idea that politicians should serve the public rather than exploit and manipulate them. The movie tackles these issues pretty well. The idea of public opinion polls being used to control public opinion makes a pleasingly original and interesting central premise.

MGM’s made-on-demand DVD offers a good open matte transfer with no extras.

Tourneur’s skill as a director combined with Dana Andrews’ subtle and complex performance are major assets. It’s an offbeat and slightly cerebral thriller with some nods to film noir. It’s original, provocative and entertaining. Highly recommended.

Nightfall (1957)

Nightfall was released by Columbia in 1957, a time when many authoritative books on film noir tell us that film noir was virtually dead. It has to be admitted that many of the late 50s movies included in film noir boxed sets are at best marginally noir. It therefore comes as a pleasant surprise that Nightfall is both genuine noir and also an extremely good movie.

This movie was directed by Jacques Tourneur, written by Stirling Silliphant and based on a novel by David Goodis so maybe we shouldn’t really be surprised by its quality. Tourneur after all did direct possibly the greatest noir of them all, Out of the Past. Goodis was one of the best of the American hardboiled writing school, while Silliphant would go on to write The Lineup in 1958, another somewhat neglected but superb noir.

Nightfall starts off in classic noir territory. It’s night time in LA and insurance investigator Ben Fraser (James Gregory) is shadowing a man named Vanning (Aldo Ray). Fraser’s job is to recover $350,000 stolen from a bank in Wyoming. He knows Vanning was involved in some way but he can’t help having a nagging doubt about Vanning’s actual guilt. He’s been shadowing Vanning so closely that he feels like he really knows the man, and it is after all his job to recognise the signs of guilt in those suspected of crime. Somehow Vanning doesn’t quite fit. He’s obviously on the run and obviously scared but he doesn’t seem scared the way a guilty man would be scared.

Vanning has much the same effect on model Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft) when he picks her up in a bar. Being a model Marie has heard just about every phony line in the book from men but Vanning really does seem to be a pretty decent guy. When he tells her his story, even though the story might seem far-fetched to most people, she’s inclined to believe him. Pretty soon she finds she has little choice - she will have to trust him if she wants to stay alive.

Vanning’s story is told in a series of flashbacks. He was on a hunting trip in Wyoming with a doctor friend when they had a very unlucky encounter with a couple of very nasty bank robbers. It was the kind of encounter that could plunge a very ordinary law-abiding citizen straight into the worst kind of noir nightmare world, a world of casual violence and murder.

The nightmare is far from over. By a series of mischances the two bank robbers no longer have the money they stole from the bank, and they’re pretty sure Vanning either has the money or knows where it is. In a memorable and very noir night scene by a deserted oil derrick they try to convince Vanning to tell them where the money is. Their methods are convincing to say the least but things don’t turn out quite the way they planned.

From the very noir world of LA at night the scene switches to the magnificent natural beauties of Wyoming, but Tourneur has no trouble maintaining the atmosphere of fear and menace.

Aldo Ray is perfect as Vanning. He is a man with something to hide, something dangerous, something that haunts him, but at the same time Ray makes us feel that Vanning really is a very nice guy who doesn’t deserve his fate.

James Gregory was a reliable character actor and handles his role with ease. Ben Fraser is a man who doesn’t give up but he isn’t interested merely in getting a result. It has to be the right result. He’s a sympathetic character but a strong one as well.

The two bank robbers are Red (Rudy Bond) and John (Brian Keith) and they’re as dangerous a pair as you’re ever likely to come cross. Red is crazy, and it’s a bad craziness. Red likes hurting people and he likes killing people even more. John isn’t crazy and he doesn’t enjoy violence but he accepts violence as part of the package when you’re on the wrong side of the law. He won’t enjoy it but John will kill you with sublime indifference if he feels he has to. Either of these men on their own would be dangerous enough but together they’re a time-bomb waiting to go off. They would kill each other without a second’s hesitation and they will certainly kill anyone who gets in their way.

Red is your basic movie psycho, but Rudy Bond makes him memorable. Brian Keith gives one of his best-ever performances as John. There’s a touch of black humour in his performance but at the same time we’re never allowed to forget that he’s a cold-blooded killer, which makes the black humour quite disturbing. Which is of course the intention of both the actor and the director.

If there’s a weakness in the film it’s perhaps that Anne Bancroft’s character doesn’t have the necessary depth to make her a truly interesting film noir female lead. Bancroft does nothing wrong but she isn’t given quite enough to work with.

You expect some good visual set-pieces from Tourneur, and you get them. The oil derrick scene mentioned earlier and the later snow-plough scene are executed with the director’s usual skill. Burnett Guffey’s black-and-white cinematography is of the quality you’d expect from a cinematographer of his high reputation. The sudden switch from LA to Wyoming works well, nicely emphasising the lead character’s position, caught between the worlds of light and darkness.

This movie is part of the Columbia Film Noir Classics II boxed set. The lack of extras for this particular movie is disappointing but the 16x9 enhanced transfer is excellent.

Compared to his best work, to movies like Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and Out of the Past, Nightfall is perhaps lesser Tourneur but it’s still a superbly crafted and very entertaining film noir. Recommended.