Rio

"Reynard" (Basil Rathbone) is quite an unscrupulous business man who comes a cropper when it turns out that quite a lot of his collateral for huge great loans - well, the ink is still wet! It's only a matter of time before he's caught and punished, and so is promptly sent off to the infamous Devil's Island prison to rot. Meantime, his loving wife (Sigrid Gurie) thinks he's dead and gets on with her life with "Bill" (Robert Cummings). When her letters stop coming, he reckons on the worst and so "Reynard" determines to escape and make it back home - except, well he's not ready for the shock awaiting him nor she for his reaction. Victor McLaglen takes up a supporting role as his best pal "Dirk", but he isn't really used enough to make too much difference to what is really a rather unremarkable melodrama until the last fifteen minutes when we reach a denouement that's a bit rushed, but allows Rathbone to use his menacing voice to create just an hint of tenseness. I'm not too sure the island jungle looked terribly realistic, and he must have been a really good swimmer - but those are technicalities for this enjoyable, but forgettable, drama.

Basil Rathbone is a very wealthy man, until it turns out he isn't; there's a lot of fraud, so he winds up going to Devil's Island. His wife, singer Sigrid Gurie, is kept in thrall, with sidekick Victor McLaglen keeping an eye on her. But drunk Robert Cummings falls in love with her and she with him. She's still loyal to Rathbone, so Cummings goes far away and reforms. Meanwhile, Rathbone learns of the incipient affair, and escapes from Devi's Island, and heads to where Miss Gurie is performing, and Cummings -- in a pencil-thin mustache -- is hoping.

Rathbone is magnetic as the scheming dirtbag, sharp and sardonic and manipulative. Miss Gurie sings three sings, and Cummings plays his role adequately. McLaglen is very god, and there are some nice bits by Billy Gilbert, Leo Carillo, and Irving Pichel.

Well, that was a little bit boring. The cast are good - except Robert Cummings (Bill) as a disgraced engineer who has taken refuge in Rio. His drunken scenes are painful to sit through. He is the new love interest for café singer Sigrid Gurie (Irene) who is plying her trade in Rio as a way to be near her convicted fraudster of a husband Basil Rathbone (Reynard) housed in a jail on a nearby island. She intends to wait for his release but love has other ideas. Meanwhile, Rathbone escapes....

Where on earth is this Rio that the film is based in? I see no Portuguese speaking characters. What I do see is a lot of Spanish speaking Mexican types. There is obviously a place called Rio somewhere in Mexico. If this was Rio, Brazil, we needed some Carmen Miranda entertainment. As an aside, I can't stand Simon Le Bon's voice, so thankfully, the Duran Duran song "Rio" has wisely been left off the film's soundtrack.

The story is only interesting when Rathbone is on screen and the misrepresentation of Rio is criminally poor. We needed to see a tutti-frutti hat and less of Cummings' awful attempt at a drunkard. Victor McLaglen (Dirk) plays Rathbone's close friend with homosexual overtones (no man is that dedicated to another man without a love arrow from Cupid) and he does have a good moment right at the film's end.

1939 was a busy year for Basil Rathbone and sandwiched between 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' and 'Tower of London' is this bizarre opus in which he is utterly riveting as Reynard, a sociopathic swindler in true Stavisky mode.

His wife is played by the appealing Sigrid Gurie, promoted by Sam Goldwyn as 'The Siren of the Fjords' but actually born in Brooklyn. Her lover is Robert Cummings and Victor McLaglen is Reynard's henchman, whose devotion borders on the homoerotic. There is some feeble comic relief from Billy Gilbert and Leo Carillo and a few instantly forgettable songs.

A film that begins well but fails alas to live up to its promise and is redeemed by Hal Mohr's cinematography. It remains a must however for Rathbone devotees and is of interest as a taster for director John Brahm's stylish noirs of the following decade.

A bleak and dark drama of a swindler who moves from the pinnacles of fortune in Paris down to misery in a chain gang in the swamps of a Brazilian penal colony, from where he escapes in desperate longing for his wife, whom he knows is in Rio as a celebrated night club singer - she already was in Paris, and she probably moved to Rio just to be closer to him, in case he would escape, but the film never tells this, although it should have informed the audience of the obvious. In Rio, though, she is courted by an alcoholic former piano tuner who turned engineer and failed with a great project, so he took to drinking. There are some very funny scenes with him. He falls desperately in love with her, but then Basil Rathbone succeeds in escaping and finds her again - too late, it seems, for everything. It is difficult to classify this semi-noir of great and exotic adventure, but it definitely is interesting, and they could have made much more of it. Basil Rathbone is excellent, as always, and so is Victor McLaglen, while Sigrid Gurie only makes you long for Marlene Dietrich, who would have made a part like this so much better.