Affair in Trinidad

When one approaches a 1940's title like 'Affair In Trinidad', you'll be hard pressed to figure that it's some sort of musical with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or some madcap Marx Brothers comedy, not a hard edged murder mystery, yet that's what this badly titled movie is. Not that there's nothing wrong with the movie, I liked it. It's just the title is sort of curious. Rita Hayworth is a.. uh.. entertainer in very sleazy club (check out the people "returning" downstairs (cough) and keeps the people entertained by singing and dancing very suggestively to a song called "Trinidad Lady". Actually, she's SMOKING (as in hot!) in this scene, her dress and dancing are amazing. But soon, the police arrive on the scene, her husband has committed suicide, and they want to find out the reasons leading to his death. Glenn Ford, playing as steely jawed as Glenn Ford can, who plays his brother, wants to know too! From there, it's a whirlwind of deception, romance and thrills (well, not really), that is not really suspenseful, because we find out early on who did it, we just have to find out why (and that reason is a silly post-war hokum). Oh well, Hayworth IS pretty to look at, and Glenn Ford is great as usual, so the combination of the two is sorta fun to watch.

In Port of Spain, Trinidad, the mediocre painter Neal Emery is found dead apparently after committing suicide. Inspector Smythe (Torin Thatcher) seeks out Neal's wife, the dancer Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth) that is the lead attraction of the Caribe night-club to tell her about the death of her husband. Soon Smythe finds that Neal actually was murdered and his prime suspect is Neal's friend, the wealthy Max Fabian (Alexander Scourby) and has eyes on Chris. Smythe asks Chris to spy Fabian to find an evidence to arrest him.

Meanwhile Neal's brother Steve Emery (Glenn Ford) unexpectedly arrives in Trinidad to visit his brother and learns that his brother had committed suicide, but he does not believe on the official statement. He stays at Chris house and decides to investigate the murder of his brother. Soon Chris and Steve fall in love with each other, but Chris cannot tell to him the reason why she continues to meet Fabian.

"Affair in Trinidad" is a film-noir with a not well developed story where Rita Hayworth steals the movie and makes it worthy. Glenn Ford's character is too nervous and shows no chemistry with Rita Hayworth. Actually there is nothing to explain why the offensive Steve and Chris falling in love with each other. The cinematography is magnificent and the plot is reasonable, but the rushed conclusion ruins this film-noir. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Uma Viúva em Trinidad" ("A Widow in Trinidad")

On the orders of Columbia studio head Harry Cohn, Rita Hayworth was transformed from a latin B player to an A picture love goddess, her high spirits passing as all-American in titles like Cover Girl and Gilda. However the curse of the beautiful is that they become possessions by collectors, just as Rita told screenwriter of Gilda, Virginia Van Upp - "Men fell in love with Gilda but woke up with me". Her greatest collector was Prince Aly Khan, and the idea of capturing a movie star predated Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier in the 1950's. However the Hayworth/Khan marriage failed and Rita returned to Hollywood. Perhaps in a depression, unhappy with the vehicle provided for her comeback role, or simply older, Hayworth's sparkle had dimmed.

That's not to say that she doesn't look beautiful in the film. Whilst not lit as gorgeously as she was by Rudolph Mate in Gilda, she has a moment here standing in repose in shadow, smoking. But even with her character being a recent widow, her voice is dead and she carries herself like a somnambulist. She is best when she is dancing as she does twice here. In the first, Trinidad Lady, is the Carmen Rita - barefoot and tossing her dress. The framing distances us - director Vincent Sherman may be more interested in the crowd around the stage, but she looks happy performing. The second, I've Been Kissed Before, has obvious parallels to her Put The Blame on Mame from Gilda. She wears a shimmery black dress as fetishistic as the famous black satin sheath, the number is schematically arranged to present her as a tramp to later be rewarded with a face slap, even the choreography recalls that of Mame. However her announced intention to dance, even if contextualised, is a dramatic change of characterisation. She gives us the Gilda we want, and not the woman we have accepted up to this time - the one we have woken up with.

The Gilda connection is made in the film by the casting of Glenn Ford as her romantic partner, thankfully treating her a little kinder this time around, Steven Geray in an amusing supporting role as her employer, Alexander Scourby as a pseudo-George Macready but without the menace, the locale being Trinidad as Gilda was set in Buenos Aires and a plot about German-ish hoods investing in shady activities that pose a threat to security. Ford tells us he was a pilot in the war and since he isn't old enough to mean WW1, we know that Upp and her co-writers have written their screenplay in a rush, explaining Hayworth's own reluctance to participate.

Scourby is give the witty lines like "Some people are mellowed by drink. Have another" and "At the risk of dislocating your personality, try to be calm". He has a funny exchange with Ford about Hayworth - "I think you look lovelier in this color than any other. Don't you agree?" "There's a few shades I haven't seen her in yet". Valerie Bettis who created Rita's dances also appears as the wife of one of the Germans and her drunken energy is very welcome. She has a great laugh and even gets to parody Hayworth's dancing at one point, and Juanita Moore is good as Rita's maid. Sherman provides an exterior of an airport with seemingly limitless open skies, and gives Scourby's interior an imposing staircase.

This film is not a bomb, plot holes notwithstanding. Sherman moves things along and at least Hayworth isn't the embarrassment she was in the Hall of Mirrors sequence in The Lady from Shanghai. Perhaps Aly Khan took the best of her and Harry Cohn was left to salvage her career with the little she had left to give.

This highly entertaining movie was the return of Rita Hayworth to the screen after a brief flirtation with married life and screen retirement. For her comeback, to establish back with the graces of the movie buying public, she is teamed with Glenn Ford who starred with her in her biggest and most popular hit Gilda. This was no guarantee for box office magic because an even bigger budgeted movie "Carmen" starring the aforementioned tanked in 1948. But that was a unoperatic take on the famous opera story Carmen with a woefully miscast Glenn Ford in a Tyrone Power like role. Avoid that movie. But going back here to the mystery and intrigue of Gilda, this movie was a box office hit unlike the earlier comment mistakenly claimed and was one of the 23 biggest hits of its year. ( I don't know the exact rank). And Glenn Ford was wooed away from Columbia by MGM with a bigger paycheck and Hayworth stayed on at Columbia through the late fifties. The plot a mismash of Notorious and the earlier Gilda as Hayworth plays the temptress who is really an innocent who all men cannot resist. Her husband is murdered and his brother shows up to find things more fishy than they really are. One thing about Hayworth, she could hoof for sure and sell sex through dance and the two musical numbers are a delight. Forlorn shadows, dark passages, whispers in the dark follow as Vincent Sherman, a true craftsman, if not an auteur (I do not believe an auteur is superior to a craftsman. An auteur just has a regular theme in the movies he/she directs.) brings sharp direction and well-earned suspense to this fine movie. Catch it whenever it airs or better, just rent it.

Affair in Trinidad is one of those pretend film noir movies that the public seem to love more than the critics, both back then on release and also now. I was personally hoping that as a big fan of Glenn Ford, and being an admirer of Rita Hayworth, I too would be thumbing my nose at the critics. Sadly not.

Directed by Vincent Sherman and with a screenplay by Berne Gilder and James Gunn, the story is set in Trinidad and pitches Hayworth as a recently widowed nightclub dancer and Ford as the deceased man's brother. The death is suspicious and as the law closes in (in the form of Torrin Thatcher) secrets will out and a bigger picture kind of emerges.

Ok! Lets not compare to Gilda and Notorious, for obvious reasons, and just accept Affair in Trinidad as its own entity. What transpires is a tired tropical exercise in romance and spy like intrigue. In fact it's a bit of a hack job coasting in on the two leading stars reputations, Ford as a genre presence and Hayworth as some sort of ogle feature. The plot is ridiculous where nothing much makes sense. Character's motivations are sketchy at best, and once the screenplay plays its hand for reveal purpose, you wonder just where are the villains from and what exactly are they up to?! Is that explained or did I have a power nap?...

It doesn't help that head weasel Max Fabian (Alexander Scourby) is so not threatening, and boring to boot, that it renders the intended dramatic oomph at pics finale as being akin to a damp squib. Hayworth goes through the motions in the acting scenes, only holding court with her two dance numbers (voice dubbed by Jo Ann Greer), and while Ford can brood with the best of them, his character is so poorly written it doesn't let the actor shine.

As for this remotely being film noir? Not a chance, neither visually, thematically or in characterisations does it work on that film making style. Consider me bloody annoyed. 5/10