Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: China Seas


This romantic adventure yarn from 1935 is another old movie I missed somehow along the way. It doesn't usually show up on lists of Clark Gable's best films, either. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gable plays Alan Gaskell, the captain of a steamship sailing from Hong Kong to Singapore. He has plenty of problems on board: his former girlfriend, a sultry nightclub singer played by Jean Harlow; an old acquaintance who's usually on the wrong side of the law, played by burly Wallace Beery; an English socialite (Rosalind Russell) Gaskell was once in love with while she was married to somebody else; a third officer who used to be a ship's captain until an act of cowardice ruined his career (Lewis Stone, kindly Judge Hardy in the Andy Hardy movies); and a drunken novelist played by humorist Robert Benchley. Throw in a typhoon . . . and oh, did I mention the secret shipment of a quarter of a million pounds in gold and a bunch of bloodthirsty Malay pirates?

As you can tell, this is sort of a kitchen-sink movie, and the fact that director Tay Garnett is able to pack all that into an 87-minute movie means that the pace never slows down for long. The script by Jules Furthman (a fine screenwriter) and James Kevin McGuinness is pretty good, full of wisecracks, poignant moments, and dramatic action. The acting is okay all around (I nearly always like Gable) and there's some decent miniature work (although the Lydecker brothers over at Republic did more and better with lower budgets).

This movie is pure Golden Age Hollywood, and I had a great time watching it. It's a prime example of the sort of movie they just don't make anymore, and if you have a soft spot for those, as I do, you should check it out.

9 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Clark Gable was my favorite as a kid so I have seen this one--and all of his movies.

Anonymous said...

Aw, this is the one where they villians give Gable "the boot", right?
I saw this on the big screen years ago at some campus cinema guild showing. Harlow was radiant, Gable was heroic, and the whole thing had such a fine pulp-magazine-style glamour to it.

I need to revisit plenty of these 1930's flicks. They deliver entertainment on a number of different levels and really seem to have something that modern films do not.

John Hocking

Todd Mason said...

I caught this one as a kid, too...though I wouldn't mind seeing it again, some four decades later. Wow, to be able to say that. But I'm always willing to catch either Russell or Benchley...

James Reasoner said...

Yep, John, this is the one. It definitely plays like it could have been a serial in ARGOSY or BLUE BOOK.

Joe Kenney said...

James, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend another Gable movie, "Too Hot to Handle," from 1938, with Gable and Spencer Tracy as rival newsreel reporters. Myrna Loy is the "aviatrix" love interest. Starting off in China, going back to the US, and ending in the Amazon rain forest complete with '30s-style "jungle savages," the movie is very much in an Argosy/Blue Book vein. It's actually on DVD, part of the Warner Archive DVDR series, but TCM plays it often.

James Reasoner said...

Thanks for the tip, Joe. I haven't seen that one.

Blogorilla said...

I've always thought that if they made a Terry and the Pirates movie, it would look a lot like this.

James Reasoner said...

Yes, this definitely has a Terry and the Pirates feel to it.

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

Perfect follow-up to RED DUST (which really should be on DVD by now) and thus my OTHER favourite Jean Harlow movie - Classic high octane Hollywood moonshine.