Trade Winds (1938)

Simply A Masterpiece

Great Film overall

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

"Trade Winds" has some enjoyable moments. This Tay Garnett-directed independent feature has the beautiful and talented Joan Bennett as a murderess on the run in the Orient pursued by a skirt-chasing former policeman played by a very miscast Fredric March. The film veers from whodunit, to travelogue, to screwball comedy, to romance, to courtroom drama without much consistency. Because the major emphasis is on comedy and romance, the film needs the versatility of a Fred MacMurray in the lead. Although a fine actor, March is out of his element in a role that requires a lighter touch. The usually reliable Ralph Bellamy, who excelled as the proverbial light comic "other man" in classics like "His Girl Friday," "The Awful Truth," and "Brother Orchid," ends up as an oafish buffoon of a policeman of the type often played by Edgar or Tom Kennedy. His performance clashes with March's and at times he seems out of an alternative universe. Although Ann Sothern has a very enjoyable drunk scene, she's underutilized, and the usually reliable Thomas Mitchell is given little to do but growl as a police commissioner... wasted in a role than would have usually gone to a William Frawley. The film's inconsistencies are likely the fault of writer/director Tay Garnett, who had a lengthy but inconsistent career resume' with at least one masterpiece ("The Postman Always Rings Twice") to his credit. He did helm some films with similar elements to "Trade Winds": "One Way Passage" with Powell and Francis, "Seven Sinners" with Dietrich and Wayne, and "China Seas" with Gable and Harlow, but unfortunately Garnett never developed a consistent style, and by the 1950s he was directing TV Western series episodes like "Death Valley Days" and "Bonanza". With a steadier hand like a Howard Hawks at the helm, and more appropriate cast choices "Trade Winds" may have been a minor classic, but now it's just a curiosity. By the way, two interesting sidebars: Dorothy Parker (of Algonquin Round Table fame) was a collaborator on the script and the enigmatic Dorothy Comingore appears briefly here (under the name Linda Winters) several years before her triumph in "Citizen Kane."

This delightfully nutty movie was not well received in its day – and still has its detractors who take it all, both story and technique, far too seriously. In fact, Trade Winds takes some getting used to. The more you see it, the more it improves. You realize that the plot is supposed to be corny, even banal. It's not meant to be taken seriously. It's simply part of the overall zany fun.I'll admit that Rudolph Maté's attractively polished studio material doesn't tone in too well with Garnett and Shackelford's 16mm footage, but who cares? We soon fall in love with the dotty script and the tongue-in-cheek players: Ralph Bellamy, laughably overbearing and wonderfully funny as the dopiest of all flatfeet; Sothern, deliciously worldly-wise; Joan Bennett deftly acerbic; and March at his most charmingly roguish, playing the ladykiller with a delightfully over-rehearsed diffidence ("Business after pleasure!"), and hilariously throwing away such barbed lines as "I wonder what dope forgot to give her the note?"Topped with a deftly ingenious music score, Trade Winds is a movie buff's delight.P.S. Garnett and Shackleford shot the 16mm travelogue material on a yacht trip around the world in 1937. They had enough left over for another movie, but box office results for this one were not encouraging, and it never materialized.

Surely this is a film as profoundly stupid as most of the films being foisted on us today. I think it was meant to be a screwball comedy -- a genre that flourished with enjoyable results in the late 30s -- but it develops into (spoiler!!) a flicker about whether the beautiful woman will go to chair, or gas chamber, or gallows (whichever was in use back then). March is playing an impossible game in which he knows that the pursuer will somehow show up at the unknown island and miss with his .38, knows Bennett will be convicted, and knows he can (spoiler!!) spot the real culprit with a (spoiler!!) phony radio newscast. Then the murderer (spoiler!!) is instantly plugged in a version of Dodge City justice. And no blood spills on the rugs! This is really awful, and one wonders why an actor as good as the great March agreed to take the script on. Bennett is a beauty though, so the thing to do is turn the sound off and just watch her whilst she is on-screen. Shame on TCM for not heading this one off before it disgraced the screen.

I must say Joan looked like Hedy Lamarr, and that is the ultimate compliment in this movie. In fact, the comics of the day, usually made jokes about her and Hedy...something like this..."Hedy so fair...why does she make Joan Bennett wear all her old hair". Years later, in an interview Joan said that she didn't think Hedy appreciated the joke..but I read otherwise, Hedy couldn't stop laughing..go figure. Anyhow, the movie was so-so, Ann Sothern, my favorite, had the usual barbs. I also read that since Joan did her Hedy turn, she got more popular than as a blond and apparently made movies that Hedy couldn't do because of her foreign accent and so Joan made a lot more movies and some pretty good ones...and yet, she never became the super star that Hedy became. Please take note..in 1950 she replaced Hedy in the "Father of the Bride". cause Hedy was too young to be Elizabeth's mother...Joan was 4 years older than Hedy.