Pacific Rendezvous

This is almost like two films--one literate and engaging, the other stupid and clichéd. It's really a shame all the problems weren't worked out with the writing, but considering how quickly most B-movies were written and produced, this isn't too unusual. It's a real shame, though, as this could have been a very good film.

First the good. The movie is original and involves WWII code-breakers. This is pretty fascinating and I liked watching the leading man (Lee Bowman) go through his paces as a master code-breaker. In fact, the first two-thirds of the film was very good. But now for the bad, the film just went on way too long and lost steam at about 50 minutes. Additionally, Jean Rogers' role as the "kooky girlfriend" must rank as one of the worst-written and distracting roles in film history!! For every smart move made by Bowman, the idiot Rogers then stepped in to screw things up as some sort of misguided "comedy relief". If her role had been intelligently written, the overall film would have improved immensely! Instead, watching her, it's hard to understand how we actually won WWII!!

Ludicrous violations of the most basic security regs are only the beginning. It's hard to see how they achieved such abysmal trash on such a low budget. I turned it off once, then got curious to see if it could get any worse. It did.

I just watched this on TCM expecting to regret the hour and a half I would have lost afterwards. I turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Low budget, indeed, but within that low budget, they managed to entertain us with good tale of wartime espionage with an intriguing plot. especially noteworthy is the deciphering scene by the team led by the main character. It is a very memorable scene and in a bigger movie would be remembered as a classic.

Yes this movie does swing a little between a romantic comedy and a serious plot, but we have come to see that with later, more expensive, and more famous movies such as Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. And yes there's the cliche of the cavalry arriving in time to save the day, but even that is explained to adequate satisfaction.

Something tells me the other reviewers expected a masterpiece here. It is not. But it is definitely far from a waste of your time. Sit down, Relax, and enjoy it.

PS, One of the reviewers condemned the performance of Jean Rogers as overacting and annoying. Well, I found that to be really harsh and unfair. To this reviewer she was very cute in her delivery of the role. I guess one man's "annoying" is another man's "cute." The only question one may ask is why her character had such a free roam in the venue of a top secret war deciphering operation. The only explanation of that, i suppose, was that her uncle was a hotshot boss there.

What really weakens what could have been a good narrative is the attempt to insert light hearted comic elements into the plot of PACIFIC RENDEZVOUS. Instead of playing it as straight drama, what could have emerged as a timely romantic drama about breaking the Japanese code during WWII becomes a trivial piece of fluff with an absurd spotlight on the silly character played by Jean Rogers.

She's the girlfriend of our hero (Lee Bowman) and does him no favors when it comes to helping the war effort crack the code. For sheer stupidity (and to make her character seem "cute" at all times), she slips dozens of sleeping pills in his coffee so he can get some rest from a heavy schedule of solving the code and ignoring her.

And throughout the movie she pouts, bounces around and shows jealousy of any other female who pursues Bowman, as for example female spy Mona Maris. Her acting is dreadful enough to bring the story down to the level of irritating fluff where it remains until the final reel.

An interesting cast headed by Lee Bowman, Russell Hicks, Mona Maris, Carl Esmond, Hans Conreid, Curt Bois and several other good players is defeated by a silly script which reduces the whole thing to a B-budget MGM programmer which played the lower half of double features in the '40s.

They didn't know it but MGM made a sort of topical film with Pacific Rendezvous. We had in fact broken the Japanese code around this time which was of course was invaluable. But no one knew then.

Lee Bowman like every good sailor wants to get to sea especially after Pearl Harbor. But on a date Jean Rogers hears he wrote a book on code breaking and tells her uncle Stanley Ridges about him. He's impressed into the Navy's codebreaking group.

And there's the inevitable Axis spy ring operating and they have to be rounded up with spies in the most unlikely places. Rogers trying to be Myrna Loy to Bowman's Bill Powell and makes holy hash of all she touches. How did we win that war?

Pacific Rendezvous is a pleasant bit of cinema from MGM's B picture unit.