Product description

Macao [DVD] [1952] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Price: £7.95
Average customer rating: 3.5

Binding : DVD
EAN : 0053939778229
Label : Turner Home Entertainment
Manufacturer : Turner Home Entertainment
Publisher : Turner Home Entertainment
Release date : 2007-01-23
Title : Macao [DVD] [1952] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]
Actor : Array
Format : Array
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Original release date : 1952-01-01
Region code : 1
Running time : 81
Studio : Turner Home Entertainment
Theatrical releaseDate : 1952
MPN : TRNDT7782D

Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-07-12 rating:

Mitchum is still the coolest guy around, even in this so-so semi-noir
With noirs, good acting is the head on the mug of beer. Strictly speaking, it's not needed for enjoyment, but a beer is more satisfying with the foam on. That brings up Jane Russell. In Macao, she looks mighty fine with all that Howard Hughes-directed attention given to how she was photographed and what she wore. Not speaking, she's every inch a femme fatale. Speaking, she's just every other inch. That straightforward all-American diction (she was born in Minnesota) gets in the way of the noir illusion. She simply isn't a seducer of sweating insurance salesmen or dumb Swedes. She's a great pal to share a life and a bed with, a woman with a nice sense of pleasant irony. There just isn't much steam generated between her and Robert Mitchum. Rita Hayworth, on the other hand, would have set Mitchum's laid back toes to smoldering. br / br /There's a lot of inside discussion about von Sternberg and this movie...all that talk about arches in the casino and beaded curtains everywhere else. Personally, I think if you didn't know the gossip you'd never suspect von Sternberg had anything to do with Macao. The movie is just a better-than-average mystery with hints of noirish charm. The story is straightforward and unexceptional. The photography is first-rate. Whatever Nicholas Ray had to do to pull the pieces together when Howard Hughes fired von Sternberg after most of the movie had been shot, Ray did efficiently. What makes Macao interesting today is one more opportunity to watch Robert Mitchum be the coolest guy around. The downside is that Gloria Graham is wasted...and, contrary to quotes and gossip, she doesn't overact for a minute. br / br /The story? Three strangers arrive at Macao on the ferry from Hong Kong. There's Julie Benson (Jane Russell), a down-on-her-luck singer with a chip on her shoulder. She needs a job. There's Nick Cochrane, a down-on-his-luck drifter who can't return to the States. And there's Lawrence C. Trumble (William Bendix), a small-time businessman who deals in "coconut oil, pearl buttons, fertilizer and nylon hose." Within hours Benson and Cochrane are dealing with Vincent Halloran (Brad Dexter), owner of one of the biggest casinos in Macao, The Quick Reward. He hires Julie to be a singer in the casino and tries to convince Cochrane to get on the next ferry back to Hong Kong. Seems Halloran is wanted bad by the New York cops, but no one can touch him as long as he stays in Macao and within the three-mile territorial limit. Halloran thinks Cochrane is an undercover cop trying to trick him out of his lair. And what role does Trumble play in all this...it has to involve more than the pair of nylons he gave Julie on the ferry. Observing all this, leaning against a wall or a piano, looking through curtains and poking her nose into things she shouldn't, is Margie (Gloria Grahame), dice girl at the casino and Halloran's squeeze. She seems to love the guy. As the story plays out there will be knives in the back, chases through Macao's darkened docks and across boats, a romantic slow ride in a sampan, and diamonds. One drawback is that Howard Hughes gave Russell plenty of opportunities to sing in his movie. She has three songs. The story slows appreciably to make time for her carefully photographed songbirding. Russell has a nice voice and does no harm except to the Arlen-Mercer classic, "One for My Baby." She has no feel for the blues and sounds as out-of-touch with the song's emotions as Doris Day would have. br / br /The DVD transfer is better than adequate. There's a commentary track by Stanley Rubin, one of the writers, and Eddie Muller, a specialist in noirs, with a separate commentary by Jane Russell spliced in, plus a TCM interview by Robert Osborne with Mitchum and Russell. I'm told the Rubin/Muller discussion is a lot of fun if you like to hear all the dish about the movie. The Osborne discussion, which I sampled parts of, is disquieting. Osborne is upbeat and wags his tail a lot, but an aged Mitchum seems bored and an aged Russell seems alternately jaundiced and amused by it all. Maybe that's just me.

review by: date: 2007-08-08 rating:

Interesting exotic film noir featuring a sultry Jane Russell
This begins with a chase scene: a man in a white suit and white hat running, being chased by some thugs and a sinister Chinese guy with a knife. The man stops and looks back, forgetting Satchel Paige's dictum: "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." They are in fact only dozen yards or so behind. But he starts running again and miraculously they are now further behind! (Typical chase scene camera work resulting in illogic. But never mind.) He ducks around a corner and hides. One of the thugs pauses, turns and sees him, which gives the man in the white suit a chance to knock him off his feet with a swift uppercut. Then he runs off in the direction he had turned. I was thinking how much he would be ahead of everybody by now if he had just kept running. br / br /Chase scene ends with a knife thrown at him landing in the middle of his back. He's a cop from New York. Dead. Somehow this scene reminded me of something from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. br / br /Next scene is much better. Jane Russell as Julie Benson is in a cabin room on a passenger ship with a touristy kind of guy who's dancing, if you can call it that. He wants more than dancing. Julie pushes him away. He won't take no for an answer. She takes off a high heel and throws it at him. He ducks and the high heel flies out the window and hits Robert Mitchum who's playing an adventurer named Nick Cochran who just happened to be walking by. Boy meets girl, cute. br / br /After a fashion he rescues the lady in distress. She's a hard talking, sultry babe with attitude. He wants to continue the party after knocking the masher out, but Julie isn't interested. So he takes her and kisses her. Very manly. She still isn't interested and tells him to beat it. br / br /He does, but some time later he notices that his wallet is missing. We see her take out the dough and toss the wallet overboard. A few minutes later she meets up with William Bendix playing a global traveling salesman named Lawrence C. Trumble. Of course we know this is an elaborate disguise and he is somebody other than who he pretends to be. The "C" stands for Cicero, he later tells Nick, "but don't tell anybody." Trumble makes with the pleasantries, but Julie brushes him off. He tells her what he's selling. One thing she likes is nylons. He gives her a free pair, "no strings attached." She takes off her old nylons right there on the deck, tossing them overboard, one by one. Nick manages to be passing on the deck beneath and catches one of them as she puts on the new nylons. Later she asks, "Did you get a nice view?" br / br /It's Macao, 36 miles from Hong Kong. It's hot. People are smoking and smuggling and gambling, and ex-pats who are stranded tend to make friends quickly. Naturally there's romance with Julie falling for Nick and vice versa, but some misunderstandings come between them. One has to do with Margie, played by the always intriguing Gloria Grahame, who, unlike Jane Russell, actually has an Oscar statue for her work in The Bad and the Beautiful from 1952, which, alas, I haven't seen. Seems that Margie would like to get her mitts on Nick and so manages at the urging of her boss, who owns a gambling nightclub, to make it seem like Nick bedded her down, or vice-versa, as you like. br / br /This reminded me a bit of Casablanca (1942) and To Have and Have Not (1944) in that we have an American in an exotic locale with a dame in a joint amid some nefarious goings-on. As in To Have and Have Not, Jane Russell, like Lauren Becall, does some singing. One of the numbers is "Make It One for My Baby and One More for the Road," which she does very well. Russell hails from a time when movies featured full-figured babes, and she was one of the best. Sexy, shapely and not a bad actress, Russell melted a few hearts in her time. br / br /In a way "Macao" is almost a parody of Far Eastern intrigue films, which might account for the slight Abbott and Costello feel. I think this may come from the fact that Josef von Sternberg began as director, but Howard Hughes fired him and had Nicholas Ray finish up. Anyway, this moves right along and there is some nice chemistry between the two stars. Personally I got a kick out of seeing them both again after all these years. br / br /Bottom line: a kind of film noir done with atmosphere and a lot of snappy one-liners. Definitely worth seeing.

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