Moviecut—International Settlement

source: International Settlement

International Settlement

This obscure 1938 film starring George Sanders and Delores Del Rio seems somewhat like Gilda, and just as good. He arrives in Shanghai in 1937 just as the Japanese forces are beginning to threaten the city. Delores Del Rio is a nightclub singer who has some dangerous associates.

Del Rio was such an exotic and classically elegant actress that it's a pity when she gets stuck donating blood to a man who just tried to strangle her, stuck with a entire stock of absurd situations with bombs bursting in air during the Sino-Japanese war. It is unsettling to see the actual bombing and destruction of a major city used as a backdrop for "B" movie melodrama, even if George Sanders does get to wear a mustache and affect something other than world-weary attitude; the "B" film had great possibilities, but too much footage is given over to a pair of silly romantic magpies, one a Sacramento reporter trying to snag an important story but getting hung up on a budding romance. There are plenty of incidental pleasures, of course: the appearance of John Carradine doing his Irish best, Harold Huber and Leon Ames as greedy baddies, and a short running time. But I'd rather see Del Rio as Madame Dubarry any day!

This film has a good premise which loses tempo as the story unfolds. It begins with a woman singing on board a ship, and then we dolly in to another woman who is enchanted by what she sees. The woman herself is not that significant, the production value in this scene is quite good. This is the scene that George Sanders is introduced and so our story begins. He is summoned to the room of a man named Labello who knows he only has $50 in his pocket and is susceptible to bribes. Labello offers him $200,000 to impersonate him in a munitions deal which Sanders accepts. The scene between Sanders and John Carradine is quite strong. It has echoes of 'Manhunt' where Carradine also plays a strong character, but doesn't meet Sanders. It would have been good if Sanders and Carradine had a fight scene.