Last night's movie was "Sea Wife"(1957), an intriguing title for an offbeat adventure story, starring Richard Burton as "Michael Cannon", an Englishman in Singapore during the war. We first see him after that, residing at the St. James Club in London, posting classified ads to someone he calls "Sea Wife". The advertisements seem to be written in a private language. He signs off as "Biscuit," his own coded moniker, but when Sea Wife doesn't answer, he grows dismayed until he receives a response from a convalescent home requesting his immediate presence.
The message isn't from Sea Wife but an ailing, bearded chap named "Bulldog" (Basil Sydney). Bulldog has seen Michael's ads in the paper and they've stirred up unhappy memories. He's suffering these days, can't get up from his easy chair, but he becomes animated upon Michael's arrival and begs him, "Please, you've got to let this go. Sea Wife is gone. You'll never find her. I did the best I could. If I die, please tell them I did the best I could!". It's clear there's a secret between the two, and that Bulldog has a guilty conscience.
He grows delirious in reminiscing, but before the nurse enters the room to kick Michael out, Bulldog continues, and we relive their tale through flashback until the end of the movie.
Cut to Singapore, 1942: Bulldog and Michael are separately rushing to board a cargo/passenger ship leaving for England. There aren't many berths left. Bulldog has a reservation, but he's late and it's been filled. However, he tries to talk his way on, and being a pushy, arrogant type, he gets his way with the ship's purser, who offers to kick the replacements out as his request. But Bulldog rescinds his demand upon seeing that his room's been taken by a Nun (Joan Collins) and the children in her care. Michael obtains a last-second spot in the ship's hold, with barely enough room to lie down. Then, fifteen minutes into the picture, the ship is hit by a Japanese torpedo. Into the lifeboats they go, women and children first, with Michael and Bulldog ending up in a rubber raft, along with the Nun, who - because she's had her habit torn off in the chaos - just seems a civilian to the men, albeit a very pretty one. As they are rowing to safety, they pick up the ship's purser, a Negro, causing some unspoken tension with Bulldog, whose racism lurks beneath the surface.
For the next twenty minutes, you've got your basic Four In a Raft survival motif, seen in various films. Delirium alternates with hours of lucidity. Water and biscuits are rationed, and we now know how Michael gets his nickname. In fact, they all acquire such names, coined by one another. The black purser is called Number Four because he was the last guy on the boat. He, in turn, names Joan Collins "Sea Wife" after watching her swim. "A sea wife is a mermaid," he tells Michael, aka "Biscuit", who is infatuated with Sea Wife and doesn't know she's a Nun. This quickly becomes the theme of the movie, with Richard Burton using his Shakespearean diction, always paused for effect, to utter the name Sea Wife at every opportunity. Burton to screenwriter: "Could you add a few more 'Sea Wifes' to this scene? I haven't said it enough times." While floating in the middle of the ocean, they are stunned one night to almost be capsized by the very Japanese submarine that sunk their ship. It's Captain is willing to let them row away and not kill them, but Number Four begs, in Japanese, for food and water, and a negotiation for survival ensues. The Captain agrees to give them a big bucket of water and a carton of food, but that's all, no rescue, and these provisions end up getting washed overboard in a schtorm after all that effort.
The quartet do The Delirious Thing again, and wind up passed out, starving and thirsty as their raft reaches an island, but gets torn to shreds on the rocks. Now we're in full-on Gilligan Mode, as they gather coconuts and build a palm-frond shelter. Pretty soon, Number Four finds a Japanese machete buried in the sand, and sharpens it, but decides to keep it for himself. Biscuit has by now fallen in love with Sea Wife. Lots of time is spent observing the two of them in the jungle, as he utters compelling Sea Wife lines: "Oh, Sea Wife, I shall follow you forevermore, as I ponder your Christian name. What is it, Sea Wife? Tell me who you are!" This is Richard Burton turned loose, but he's good, unlike in Exorcist II. Sea Wife, however, refuses to answer his questions, or let on that she's a Nun, because she's conflicted between romance and her vows.
Meanwhile, Number Four is building a raft, Professor-style. They're gonna try and take the current into the shipping lanes, ala Jonesy and Ralph Meeker, but then Bulldog pulls a stunt I can't reveal. It has to do with Number Four's increasing belligerence and his possession of the knife, but Bulldog's action, and a particular line of dialogue, would never pass muster in today's Woken Cancel Culture "pretend it isn't real" world where you erase anything you don't like, including prejudice.
In real life, when you cancel prejudice, all it does is go underground. At least this strange script tells it like it is, and it's brutal on both sides. But then Bulldog tries to justify his actions at the end, in the Convalescent Home scene. He tries to redeem himself, also, by telling Michael that Sea Wife is dead. "She died on the rescue ship." But is that the truth? Two Huge Thumbs Up. An unusual film, despite the familiar themes, and as noted in reviews of some of her other early movies, Joan Collins was quite the sensitive young actress. Forget her image as the Dynasty bimbo. She was very talented (as was sister Jackie) in her early career. The picture is widescreen, slightly soft, and in color. Highly recommended. ////
The previous night, proving that bigger budgets and A-list names don't equal more coherent plots, we give you "Double Confession"(1950), a murder mystery set on the English coast, co-starring Peter Lorre in Full Creepout Mode, and directed by a young Ken Annakin, who would go on to make such blockbusting classics as "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,"The Longest Day", and "Battle of the Freaking Bulge." He also had the character of Annakin Skywalker named after him, and though George Lucas denies it, it's gotta be true; where else have you ever heard the name Annakin (and he's a fellow director, the kind Lucas would've looked up to). My Dad showed a 16mm print of "The Longest Day" at my 8th birthday party. Some of the kid's Moms wouldn't let them stay. Poor kids.
Anyway, one thing about Ken Annakin, like Spielberg (another likely Annakin fan) he sure can put pictures on the screen. The problem here is the schcript, usually the first thing you can blame when it comes to a troublesome movie. A good script can cover bad direction, but not vice versa. And it's not that this script is terrible, per se, or even convoluted (though it is that). It's just straight-up inexplicable, and I defy anyone, even all the IMDBers who've contributed to giving it a 6.4 rating, to tell me what the secret of the plot was all about.
As it opens, a cuckolded man named "Jim Medway" (Derek Farr) is hiking down a rocky seaside cliff at 4 am, looking for The White Cottage, which must be imagined in capital letters because the screenwriter intends it as a beacon for what is about to take place. It's another Greenhilly trip without the laughs, Mr. Cherrywood.
And incidentally, is that your real name, or not?
Anyhow, Medway runs into an Old Salt on the cliff, who directs him to The White Cottage after telling him to watch his step before he falls over the edge. "What're ye doin' here at 4 in the mornin'?"
He wants to spy on the cottage, and we'll find out why later on.
In the morning, a maid screams. A woman is dead in The Cottage, and police find a second body bobbing in the surf near the shore, that of a man named "Charlie Durham" (William Hartnell). If you can tell me who he is, you can take over this column. Due to his undefined relationship to anyone in the movie, his name, when mentioned later on, only serves to confuse, because - wait a minute - it's not Charlie Durham whose body has been found, it's someone else. Who the heck fell off the doggone cliff, then?
Well anyhow, the movie now focuses on Medway, the estranged husband of the dead woman at The White Cottage. She was a sleeparound gal, so naturally, suspicion falls on him. He heads to the beach, where we'll spend a lot of time, and where Ken Annakin will soak up the atmosphere. There, Medway will meet "Ann Corday" (Joan Hopkins), a pretty, single woman with two kids, who will serve as a romantic distraction while also playing savior to the police-hounded Medway. He knows the cops will eventually come looking for him, because it's his wife who was killed, so he decides to schpend his last day of freedom at the beach, and at a carnival with Ann, but he also goes to the nearby Primrose Bar, a swanky club run by Charlie Durham again, whom he tells to his face he's gonna frame for his wife's murder. "I killed her, but the cops will think you did it, because I can prove you were sleeping with her." Durham's best friend is "Paynter" (Peter Lorre), who, we later find out, owns The White Cottage. Lorre is in Psycho Killer mode and tries to run over Medway and Ann with a speedboat in the ocean. He's doing it for Durham, who once saved his life, and when Durham objects ("I don't want any murders!), Lorre looks downright dejected.
Meanwhile, reporter "Hilary Boscombe" (Ronald Howard) is hot on the trail. Medway asks him for a job as an assistant journalist, and if you aren't confoosed yet, hang in there: you will be. Three screenwriters = too many cooks, broth spoiled.
On the beach, and on the midway carnival rides, Ken Annakin keeps showing us a man, wife and small child who are playing with a toy boat. Boy, is he fascinated with this family. They're only in the movie for atmosphere, and so Annakin can make an individual directorial stamp, and hey! - at least they provide relief from the twin yawners of the tension-breaking romance, and the mind-dumbing brick wall of a plot. (That's mind-dumbing, not mind-numbing).
Is Jim Medway out for revenge, or is Peter Lorre trying to confess to the same set of murders? Who was the man who fell off the cliff? Believe me, that will be your Question Number One when the movie's over.
Having said all of that, it's actually a good flick, very well made and acted, with great photography and setting. But the plot? Your guess is as good as mine. Let's give it Two Bigs because it looks good and Lorre is a certified whack job. The picture is razor sharp. ////
And that's all for tonight. My blogging music is Rick Wakeman's latest album "Gallery of the Imagination" (really good!), my late night is Handel's Rodelinda Opera. I hope your week is off to a good start, and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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