A bit of tosh set in Singapore during WWII. It’s got pearl smuggling, Japanese invasion, amnesia and uses voice-over narration and super noir lighting to tell its story:
It also makes great use of Nancio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed’s ‘Temptation’:
‘You came,
I was alone,
I should have known,
you were temptation!’
Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner star and Ava, at the height of her beauty, gets a superb star intro:
The film is also notable for its queer coding. Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon set a certain pathway for gay male representation: mincing, duplicitous, smelling of gardenias, charming but deadly. In Singapore, George Lloyd follows in his footsteps, the coding is less explicit, as is the effect. But the message remains clear.
Part of the great Universal Noir #2 box set from Indicator.
José Arroyo
