Singapore Woman

Off slumming one night in a dive on the Singapore waterfront, a group of colonials spot a familiar face off in a corner. It's one of their own (Brenda Marshall), come to gin and hard times because of a curse hurled at her by the widow of a suicide supposedly lured to his death because of this rich, spoiled temptress. Having had their cheap thrills, the party moves on, all except David Bruce, who stays behind to play the Good Samaritan.

He whisks her off to his plantation and sobers her up, though she's all but given up on herself. Surprise, surprise, they fall in love. There are a couple of obstacles looming, however: Bruce's bland, blonde fiancee, and Marshall's husband, long presumed dead....

Coming in at just over an hour, Singapore Woman is a quick-and-dirty programmer, a romantic melodrama with all the trappings of its East-of-Suez predecessors from Rain to The Letter: rubber plantations and monsoons, The Raffles Hotel and rickshaws. But Negulesco, who in his early career was largely confined to Big-Band shorts, digs into this exotically seasoned stew with gusto. He makes every minute count and makes the movie look good, too.

Out of Marshall he draws a startlingly strong performance, equally good on the skids and in the frothier scenes of redemption. This actress, born in the Philippines, appeared as a Eurasian or Hispanic beauty in several 40s movies, and starred in Anthony Mann's Strange Impersonation five years after this film; though she lived until 1993, she made the last of her films in 1950 -- a loss to cinema.

There's not a great deal of depth or resonance in Singapore Woman, but it's satisfyingly put together, and gives a preview of the talent Negulesco would later lavish on The Mask of Dimitrios, Humoresque and, his masterpiece, Road House.

Usually, I'm a fan of the early forties films of Jean Negulesco (i.e. "Mask Of Dimitrios", "Threee Strangers", "Humoresque") but this first offering from him is a dull exception. It's basically W. Somerset Maugham with a lobotomy as we sluggishly make our way through a silly, overplotted story with stiff, stilted dialogue and marginal acting from the two leads, both deservedly more famous for their off screen achievements (she married Bill Holden and he was best friends with Errol Flynn). With the notable exception of good art and set decoration that at least gives this thing a properly decadent far Eastern look and a well staged bar brawl nothing even mildly holds one's interest. Solid C.

Singapore Woman stars Brenda Marshall in the eponymous role, from 1941, directed by Jean Negulesco.

Said woman is Vicki Moore, who considers herself a jinx, with good reason. Her father's tin mines were flooded and rendered useless, her husband was lost at sea, and a suitor kills himself.

On night an associate (David Ritchie) of her father discovers her soaking up gin in a cheap waterfront bar. He decides to help her get her life back.

The dark, exotically beautiful Marshall was Mrs. William Holden for 30 years. She's not really photographed to her best advantage in parts of this film. Nor is she surrounded by top Warner stars.

Nevertheless, it's a kind of Singapore riff on Dangerous, and she's interesting to watch.

Brenda Marshall in the part that Bette Davis got an Oscar for - aw c'mon fellers!

The art department wheel out the tropical foliage they are used to rigging, and the verandah from THE LETTER. However despite occasional bursts of production value like the opening dockside activity, the seedy Crows Nest bar brawl or a dozen extras tin mining, most of the film is Miss Marshal in awful Damon Giffard outfits emoting about the jinx that makes her destroy the lives of the men in the support cast. She gets to smash her mirror reflection with a liquor bottle too.

Negulesco on his first feature is trying but he's got a long way to go to the excellence of JOHNNY BELINDA and HUMORESQUE. Featured players are a drab lot with the good people making fleeting appearances - Tony Warde, Ian Wolfe and (you have to be quick) Alexis Smith.

Brenda Marshall's father was a rubber plantation supervisor in Malaysia. Then he died and everything went to pot. The current manager, David Bruce, has scraped together enough money to buy the needed equipment when Miss Marshall descends on him, wrecking a bar in town and captivating him. She won't commit, though. She knows she's a jinx.

Jean Negulesco's first feature is a switched-location version of DANGEROUS, with set design by Charles Novi and a good-girl-bad-girl dichotomy that might make you think it's an early example of film noir. It's not. The ropes and scrims soon vanish, letting you know it's intended as the closely allied genre of magical realism, albeit one with a surprisingly feminist slant. Even that vanishes in the end with a rushed and silly ending, sending Negulesco back to musical shorts for the next three years. With Virginia Field, Jerome Cowan, Rose Hobart, Heather Angel, and Dorothy Tree.