La femme aux cigarettes blondes

Several years before anyone thought of the film Trade Winds, director Tay Garnett did a round the world tour and took a camera crew with him. They shot miles of beautiful travelogue type footage and Garnett had it in his mind to use it. According to the Citadel Film Series book The Films of Fredric March, Garnett sold the idea to independent producer Walter Wanger. Who thereupon commissioned a story to be written around these films and naturally it would be starring his wife Joan Bennett. All that background you see in Trade Winds is what Garnett shot years earlier.

Trade Winds is a strange film it can't quite make up its mind to be a mystery, comedy, or drama it truly defies classification. One thing we do know is that right away we're given information regarding the forensics that Joan Bennett is innocent. If she had not run, but stayed behind she'd have known right away and we'd have had no film.

But run she does and private detective Fredric March is put on her trail. He sure needs the money as well as he and secretary Ann Sothern owe a lot of bills.

The weakness of the plot is made up for a lot by the supporting performances of both Ann Sothern and Ralph Bellamy. Sothern is not in the tradition of private eye secretaries like Effie in The Maltese Falcon. She turns out to be just as good a gumshoe as March and she's a person of shifting loyalties.

Which is unlike Ralph Bellamy who might easily qualify for being the dumbest cop the movies ever portrayed. I could have seen him being commandant of the Police Academy forty years later. He's so earnest in such a Dudley Doo-Right manner he's positively hilarious. Sothern and Bellamy really do carry this film.

March is a charming rascal and Bennett a beautiful and vulnerable victim, but if you watch Trade Winds I know you'll enjoy Sothern and Bellamy most of all.

Detective (March) goes on globe-hopping quest to return suspected murderess (Bennett) to authorities. He's aided by two bumblers (Sothern & Bellamy), at the same time he falls for his attractive quarry.

Not quite a sophisticated comedy, not quite a picaresque chase, not quite a murder mystery- - all add up to a not very good movie. Hard to believe this is from glossy MGM since the production values are nearly incompetent. In fact, I've seen better process shots from a Lash LaRue oater, and since these make up half the movie, you've got to wonder where quality control was.

I'm assuming acerbic wit Dorothy Parker and husband Alan Campbell were hired to furnish sophisticated banter for the two couples. If so, I must have missed it. What I did hear were subtle grammar gaffes from Sothern (e.g. 'whom for 'who') and clever malaprops (e.g. 'deduct' for 'deduce') from Bellamy, intended, I guess, to show their humorous pretensions, but hardly crowd-pleasers.

Also, it looks like Bellamy's buffoonish cop amounts to a typical example of 30's cops when Hollywood treated them as low-comedy relief. And whose idea was it to tack on the last 10-minutes of whodunit that sort of sticks out like a glued on appendage.

Where the movie does work is with the lovely Bennett and the comedically gifted Sothern. Still, it's a bit puzzling why the movie didn't turn out better given the talent involved, including ace producer Walter Wanger. Maybe it has to do with as many as four writers and who knows how many re-writes or with director Garnett's inability to forge a unifying style. But, whatever the reason, the film remains a somewhat unlikely disappointment.

"Trade Winds" is a comedy-drama starring Joan Bennett, Frederic March, Ralph Bellamy, and Ann Sothern, directed by Tay Garnett.

Bennett plays Kay Kerrigan, a young woman who is out to avenge her sister's death and goes after her sister's ex-boyfriend (Sidney Blackmer). When Kay says she wishes she could shoot him, he hands her a gun and she shoots. Then she starts running for her life. To change her appearance, she dyes her hair dark. This turned out to be a boon for Bennett, who took on an exciting new look with the dark hair.

The police send one of their own after her, Ben Blodgett (Ralph Bellamy) and one of their ex-own, the womanizing, slippery Sam Wye (March), now a detective who spends a lot of time coming on to women. He's also romancing his secretary Jean (Ann Sothern). He agrees to search for Kay and manages to get away from from Jean and hop a boat. He gets a line on Kay, and when Jean next appears, she's an assistant to Kay. Then Sam finds out there's a $100,000 award on Kay's head. Small problem - he falls madly in love with Kay.

Fun comedy that slows up in the middle, with good performances by a relaxed March, a very funny Sothern, a lovely Bennett, and Bellamy as an overblown police detective. Not the best, but not bad - except for some of the process shots.

This isn't a serious movie, like the genres assigned by IMDb would suggest. It's first and foremost comedy and romance. Crime is only the background. In fact, the crime aspect is a bit rushed in the beginning so they can move on to the comedy and romance. So if you're expecting a serious film, this isn't it. Ralph Bellamy is total comedy through the whole thing, as well as Ann Sothern.

I did submit comedy as an additional genre to IMDb and explained why, but they declined for no reason, so I'm letting you know here, in this review.

If you watch it knowing it's a comedy (I had no idea, so I was pretty annoyed), it's not bad, but the pacing is off. The actors are very good in their roles though. Overall it's a bit of a strange movie with lots of silliness and traveling and some things that don't quite add up. But if you're looking for a laugh with a sort of held together story and good acting, this will suit.

It was not really funny. It was not really a mystery because we saw the shooting and heard the cop's description of the murder and that was not what we had witnessed and so we knew what would eventually happen somewhere down the pike.

When the "mystery" was cleared up we had never met the perpetrator before OR that person had been too insignificant to notice. And the finale seemed rushed and pointless.

As for the talent being wasted ... Ann Sothern TRIED but her dialogue was forced. Ralph Bellamy is too smart to play stupid convincingly, Joan Bennett and Frederic March seemed unconvincing as a romancing pair.

The rear projection was pitiful ...even for being the first feature to use it extensively. Lame and distracting.

Skip this one !