“Across the Pacific” (1942) is a nifty spy melodrama that offers a pleasant reunion of three key players (Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet) and director (John Huston) from the previous year’s “The Maltese Falcon”, which was a big hit for Warner Bros.
The film takes place just before the bombing at Pearl Harbor and details how ex-solider Bogart gets swept up in a Japanese plot to blow up the Panama Canal. Much of the action takes place on a Japanese-owned passenger/cargo ship which seems to travel through heavy fog an awful lot in the evening (movie fog is a wondrous thing to behold in black and white). Of course the ship is rife with mysterious travelers and people whose identities are not what they seem.
It’s all most enjoyable, and moves along at a crisp 97 minutes. I continue to be amazed at the pace of these Warner Bros. “A” features. Of all the major studios of the era, most of the Warner Bros. features are as fast paced as a “B” movie. It’s just one of the many reasons why it’s my favorite studio from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
For Charlie Chan fans there is the additional fun of seeing Number One Son (Keye Luke) and Number Two Son (Sen Yung) in supporting roles.
Rating for "Across the Pacific": Three stars
Showing posts with label Mary Astor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary Astor. Show all posts
Don Q, Son of Zorro
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
I apologize to faithful readers of this blog (all five of you), for not updating this of late. Thanks to a plethora of summertime activities, I did not go see any movies this past weekend and hardly watched any at home.
However, I did watch one movie, a silent movie called “Don Q, Son of Zorro” (1925) starring one of the decade’s biggest stars, Douglas Fairbanks.
A sequel to his enormously successful “The Mark of Zorro” (1920) – yes, they even had sequels in the 1920s – stars Fairbanks in the title role, who is framed for murder and must clear his name. Of course the villain (Donald Crisp, who also directed) must compete with Don Q for the same woman (Mary Astor, 16 years before her celebrated turn as Brigid O’Shaughnessey in the immortal “The Maltese Falcon”).
With the help of Pa Zorro (also played by Fairbanks), all rights are wronged and Fairbanks and Astor share a romantic clinch at the end. The climax is very exciting as father and son duel their way through the ruins of the family estate. An expert swordsman, Don Q also wields a whip in ways that would make Indiana Jones turn green with envy.
The film is a lot of fun and well worth watching but there was one scene that had me gasping in amazement.
Fairbanks as Don Q is sitting in a chair near a fire. He puts a cigarette in his mouth, and in one fluid motion, flicks his whip towards the fire so the end of it catches fire, snaps it up to light his cigarette and with a quick flip of his wrist extinguishes the flame at the end of his whip. Simply amazing.
At first I thought it was trick photography. After all, the climax of the movie shows the two Zorros fighting side by side, and Fairbanks’s movie the previous year was the monumental, special effects heavy “The Thief of Baghdad”, so he was not adverse to using the latest in special effects techniques.
But I stopped the film several times and re-ran it back and forth, even in slow motion, and it looks real to me and not an illusion. In real life Fairbanks was an acrobat so its very possible he taught himself this cigarette lighting trick.
There’s also a leap into a carriage that has to be seen to be believed. The camera is far enough away so we can see there’s no trampoline device of any kind on the ground. He faces the carriage, leaps into it, twists his body so he lands facing forward into the carriage before driving off. Again, simply amazing.
It’s no wonder Fairbanks was the idol of millions worldwide in the 1920s.
However, I did watch one movie, a silent movie called “Don Q, Son of Zorro” (1925) starring one of the decade’s biggest stars, Douglas Fairbanks.
A sequel to his enormously successful “The Mark of Zorro” (1920) – yes, they even had sequels in the 1920s – stars Fairbanks in the title role, who is framed for murder and must clear his name. Of course the villain (Donald Crisp, who also directed) must compete with Don Q for the same woman (Mary Astor, 16 years before her celebrated turn as Brigid O’Shaughnessey in the immortal “The Maltese Falcon”).
With the help of Pa Zorro (also played by Fairbanks), all rights are wronged and Fairbanks and Astor share a romantic clinch at the end. The climax is very exciting as father and son duel their way through the ruins of the family estate. An expert swordsman, Don Q also wields a whip in ways that would make Indiana Jones turn green with envy.
The film is a lot of fun and well worth watching but there was one scene that had me gasping in amazement.
Fairbanks as Don Q is sitting in a chair near a fire. He puts a cigarette in his mouth, and in one fluid motion, flicks his whip towards the fire so the end of it catches fire, snaps it up to light his cigarette and with a quick flip of his wrist extinguishes the flame at the end of his whip. Simply amazing.
At first I thought it was trick photography. After all, the climax of the movie shows the two Zorros fighting side by side, and Fairbanks’s movie the previous year was the monumental, special effects heavy “The Thief of Baghdad”, so he was not adverse to using the latest in special effects techniques.
But I stopped the film several times and re-ran it back and forth, even in slow motion, and it looks real to me and not an illusion. In real life Fairbanks was an acrobat so its very possible he taught himself this cigarette lighting trick.
There’s also a leap into a carriage that has to be seen to be believed. The camera is far enough away so we can see there’s no trampoline device of any kind on the ground. He faces the carriage, leaps into it, twists his body so he lands facing forward into the carriage before driving off. Again, simply amazing.
It’s no wonder Fairbanks was the idol of millions worldwide in the 1920s.
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