Fire Down Below

Rita Hayworth, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Lemmon star in "Fire Down Below," a 1957 film.

Hayworth plays Irena, a woman with a mysterious European past and no passport. Mitchum and Lemmon are Felix and Tony, who run a ferry boat in the Caribbean. They are paid to take Irena to another island.

Felix (Mitchum) knows she's trouble and worse than that, he's attracted to her. Tony (Lemmon) falls for Irena and, when she leaves the ferry, he accompanies her.

The film takes an odd turn here - Tony wants to marry Irena, so he takes a job transporting illegal goods to get some money together. But someone has tipped off the police. Tony and his associate escape, and Tony ends up on a Greek ship. The ship has an accident, and Tony is trapped in the hold.

This film starts out as one thing - a love triangle, a mysterious woman with a checkered past, two friends who become enemies - and becomes the story of a man facing death in the cargo hold of a ship.

That part goes on too long, and we don't see the happenings on dry land. We are told about them toward the end of the film. It just felt like something was missing.

There are suspenseful moments and good acting. Mitchum plays the sardonic Felix well, and Lemmon is, as always, likable as Tony and handles both the light and dramatic scenes very well.

I do think for this role his casting was somewhat strange. I think like Hayworth he was trying to fulfill contractual obligations to Columbia.

Hayworth is a long way from her Gilda days, but a striking woman. Her hard life, like the life of the character, has caught up with her. She doesn't display a lot of range in the role but has a knockout dance number during Mardi Gras that is very much the old Rita.

Interesting for the cast.

This film was quite enjoyable but I think it could have been immeasurably improved if the director and editor had included more scenes between Robert Mitchum and Rita Hayworth. The episode where Jack Lemmon's character is trapped on the ship is far too drawn out. His crisis should've been shortened and they should've actually shown Rita Hayworth turning to Robert Mitchum because they are kindred spirits, instead of just explaining this occurance later on. Mitchum and Hayworth were off-screen far too long. That major complaint aside, I found the film very entertaining. Mitchum is perfect with the weary, cynical, and intense combination. Hayworth has more depth than usual as the mysterious foreign woman. And Lemmon in a rare dramatic turn is very convincing as the naive and lovestruck young man. Here's an interesting tidbit: the film was executive produced by Cubby Broccoli, the long time producer of the Bond movies, and Bernard Lee, who would play M in the Bond films, has a supporting role in Fire Down Below. 7/10.

Rita Hayworth was 40 at the time this film was made. Rather interesting. She still looked lovely. Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon are both vying for her attention; Mitchum wins out momentarily.

Toward the end the story shifts as Lemmon is trapped in a ship, there is a fire, and Lemmon becomes a more sympathetic character. Mitchum and Hayworth feel guilty. This story would seem ripe for a re-make; it is a good story; rather a curiosity.

The Technicolor oranges and greens are prevalent; it is always interesting to watch films from this period. It would seem the stars themselves were fabricated to coordinate with the surroundings. The scenes at the carnival event are colorful and wild. Worth seeing as a commentary on the times.

Cubby Broccoli splashed out on three big stars - two of whom fall out over the third - for this high-profile Warwick production (based on a novel by Max Catto), in CinemaScope and Technicolor swamped with local colour. Presumably they got nervous about Mitchum & Hayworth's delayed entrance and it was decided to jettison what was (when it's pointed out) obviously the original flashback structure.

Hence the opening credits superimposed on a limbo dance in full flight and the introduction of the port and much of the supporting cast at what is now the mid-point, with Bernard Lee nipping through the town on his little red scooter in a sequence originally intended to start the film. (Mitchum and Hayworth then disappear from the film for half an hour at this point before making what was going to be their entrance.)

The best scenes are easily those that poignantly pair Jack Lemmon (just starting out in films) with Bonar Colleano (killed soon afterwards in a car crash) in what is now the second half of the film.

It's interesting that the things that make this film weak would have made it great if only it had been made in the late forties or early fifties and had been made in black and white. The setting is some exotic never-never land where life is cheap and morality is a rare and expensive commodity somewhere in the Caribbean. The acting is stylized. The characterizations are two-dimensional. The story is one of an overheated romance and acts of heroism involving people who are not worthy of respect except that ultimately they do the right thing. Rita Hayworth is a bad girl with a heart of gold, a faded version of Gilda. Robert Mitchum is doing his usual Robert Mitchum imitation, i.e. he's just too tired and bored to give the really good performance of which he was capable. Jack Lemmon is the idealist romantic who is willing to lay everything on the line and winds up learning a bitter lesson about people. As I said earlier, if only this film had been made earlier and in black and white it would have been an archetypal example of film noir. Personally, I like film noir but the genre was highly stylized and too often the actors were required to strike poses rather than develop the personalities of the parts they were playing. Unfortunately this film was made too late to be considered a part of that form and therefore deserves scorn instead of being lauded in Saturday afternoon showings at Parisian film societies.