Singapore (1947)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Fantastic!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The premise and first third of Singapore are really interesting, but once the mystery is exposed, the last two thirds of the movie are far from entertaining. Fred MacMurray travels to Singapore, and while he's pleasant to his fellow American tourists Porter Hall and Spring Byington, it's clear to see he's unsettled about something. He goes to a particular table at a particular nightclub at a particular hotel, sits, and gives the audience a voice-over monologue about how he misses Linda, the woman he was going to marry five years prior. Cue a romantic flashback: Fred was smuggling pearls into Singapore when he met and fell in love with Ava Gardner. They were going to be wed, but they were separated during a Japanese air raid and she was killed. End of flashback. Now, as Fred sits at their table, he hears their song playing, and lost in his sad thoughts, he actually sees Ava Gardner on the dance floor!Intriguing, right? Well, I'm sure you can think of at least three explanations as to why he suddenly sees his dead lover after five years. I did, but unfortunately, the film took a fourth, far less interesting direction. After that, the most enjoyable part of the film is the patter between Fred MacMurray and Richard Haydn. Richard plays a deputy in the police department, so he's trying to catch Fred's criminal activities, but they're also longtime pals so there's a bit of leniency in his method. Think of Kevin Kline and Jean Reno's relationship in 'French Kiss'. Unfortunately, with not much of a love story, even less of a mystery, and not too much suspense about Fred's pearl smuggling business, there's not really a good reason to watch the movie. Unless you're an Ava Gardner fan, which I, unapologetically, am not.

Fred's back from the service looking to retrieve the pearls he was smuggling before Singapore was invaded and is haunted by the memory of what he thinks is his lost love Ava. One day she reappears but she doesn't remember him. What's the answer to the mystery?Studio bound adventure is entertaining enough but serves more as a study in star building. This was Ava Gardner's last film before she moved into the top tier of MGM stars with her next film, One Touch of Venus. Having scored heavily in two supporting roles for her home studio, The Killers & The Hucksters, they loaned her to Universal for the female lead in this alongside the established Fred MacMurray to test her lead appeal with minimal risk. She seems a bit cautious at times but radiates star quality every second she's on screen. Considering the magnitude of the stars in the leads this is curiously obscure but if you enjoyed Gilda or similar fare it's worth the time.

Ava Gardner is such a pleasure to look at, even a B movie in which she plays makes my time worthwhile .Actually,Fred McMurray has got pearls and a gem .The screenplay is far-fetched -with an improbable outcome- and includes smuggling,war (no battles or camp of prisoners though),and even amnesia -but the viewer is not taken in by it a single minute ;there is of course the usual flashback ,which can be found in almost all the films noirs of the era.Compared to "the killers" ,Gardner's precedent movie ,it's obvious Brahm is no match for Siodmak.A couple of tourists -the kind of people we often see in the hotels- provides the comic relief.If you do not ask too much ,it's pretty entertaining and well acted.

Not quite a melodrama; not quite a suspense thriller. Not quite an A movie but certainly not a B-level. Singapore takes place, of course, in Singapore, just as the Japanese are invading and then just after the end of WWII. It's a reasonably solid, efficient story of three people: Matt Gordon (Fred MacMurray), a suave and slightly sardonic smuggler of pearls. Gordon is an honest man at heart, but usually can't resist easy money and the kind of gambles necessary to win it; Michael Van Leyden (Roland Culver), a wealthy planter who spent most of the wars years in a Japanese-run prison camp. He's a brisk, authoritative man with one great weakness. He loves his wife; and Linda Grahame (Ava Gardiner), a beautiful, sultry young woman, perhaps something of an adventuress. She and Gordon fall in love and are to be married. Then the Japanese invade, bombs fall, and when Gordon leaves Linda for a moment to retrieve pearls he had hidden in his hotel room, he returns without the pearls to burning waterfront ruins and no sign of Linda. He searches desperately and then must leave in his boat, which is crowded with refugees. We can imagine his surprise five years later when he returns to Singapore after the war and sees in a posh nightclub a beautiful young woman who looks exactly like Linda. She is dancing with Van Leyden...and when she is introduced to Matt Gordon, he learns she is Ann Van Leyden, Michael's wife. Yes, that most useful of plot devices is established...amnesia. Matt Gordon is determined to do two things. He is certain that if Ann Van Leyden can only recover her memory she will remember him and their love. He is almost equally determined to recover the pearls he had hidden in his hotel room before the war. Van Leyden is determined to keep his wife, whom he loves dearly, by his side. They had met in that prison camp during the war. Van Leyden saved Ann many times. He will do almost anything, except cause her unhappiness, to save her again. And Ann...or is it Linda? What does she want? See the movie. Hovering in the background is the shady Mr. Mauribus (Thomas Gomez), a large-figured and often sweaty crook who has a claim to Gordon's pearls. While Mauribus won't stoop to physical violence himself, his assistant, Sascha, is all too eager to be let off the lease. It's no spoiler to say that everyone except Mr. Mauribus and Sascha eventually act with honor. A happy ending is in the cards at the start of the movie when Matt Gordon enters the old hotel, pauses in the lobby and then tells a bellhop to take his luggage to his room. He looks around the deserted bar and then walks to a small table for two, partly hidden by palm fronds. When the waiter arrives, Gordon orders two gin slings. Yes, that was what he and Linda always drank here, hidden away in their own world. For Fred MacMurray, a reliable and versatile leading man, this is one more of the many lead roles he took where his personality and competence made a career for him. If he didn't set many sparks off, he also didn't make many duds. For Ava Gardner, however, this was one of her early starring roles where the studio was deliberately building her up for bigger and better things. She looks great, acts a bit, and has a sympathetic character to play. For me, the joy and interest in the movie, however, rests with three character actors. There's Richard Haydn playing deputy commissioner Hewitt. It's a straight, honest role and Haydn does it just fine. The fun is remembering all those comic roles Haydn worked his way into, where he deliberately unleashed his adenoids. Watch him as the butler in And Then There Were None (1945). Few people could play oozy, greasy opportunists, cowards and villains as well as Thomas Gomez. Given a chance, he also could do just fine in sympathetic parts. Watch him as John Garfield's older brother in Force of Evil (1948). Most of all, there's Roland Culver, a superb, highly skilled British actor who spent some time in Hollywood but returned to England. He was at his very best playing highly competent men of the world. He was as much at home in sophisticated comedy as he was in serious drama. For the sophisticated comedy part, you can't do better than to watch him in On Approval (1944). And to prove he hadn't lost his edge in old age, watch him as the elderly and irascible Duke of Omnium in The Pallisers (1974).