Over the past week I have by chance looked at three movies set in Malaysia and environs: CRAZY RICH ASIANS, a modern fairy tale set in Singapore among the Chinese super-rich; TRIP TO BORNEO, a travelogue from 1907, in which Chinese workers perform grunt labor; and this one from 1940, in which an improbably cast Paul Lukas is a rich Chinese man who marries touring singer Kay Walsh, takes her to his home in the jungle, then brings in her sister, Jane Baxter to alleviate her loneliness. In the meantime, the two women have fallen in love with two stiff-lipped British brothers, played by Robert and Wallace Douglas (who were no relations in real life).
It was the third and final screen version of a novel by Marion Osmond, directed by George King, now best remembered for helming the Tod Slaughter melodramas in the 1930s. It's full of the standard British racist casting that didn't go out of style for many a year; Christopher Lee was still playing Fu Manchu in 1969, after all. Yet Lukas' character is clearly wronged and he is a gentleman about it.... assuming you accept that wives are property, of course, which since I am writing this in 2018, they are not, of course.
In any case, this is a technically fine movie, with some good camerawork throughout by Hone Glendinning and a story that hangs together, thanks to editor Jack Harris. This was not an A movie, but it was produced by British Lion, when it was making a run upwards towards IN WHICH WE SERVE. It turns out that when you gave him a budget, King could produce a decent film, even if his taste and morals seems out of date almost eighty years later.
