Inferno dei tropici

John Brahm's Rio is often cited as an early (1939) precursor of what would become, a few years later, film noir. But it doesn't have a great deal going for it, though Brahm later did creditable work in the cycle (The Brasher Doubloon, Hangover Square, The Locket). Basil Rathbone, best known of course as Sherlock Holmes, puts aside his deerstalker's cap and meerschaum pipe to portray a swindling international financier who, along with his songstress wife (Sigrid Gurie, whoever she was), seem to be the toast of le tout Paris. Alas, he's arrested and sent to rot in one of those French-colonial penal colonies off the coast of South America (which probably never existed but is conveniently close to Rio de Janeiro). His wife sticks by him for some reason and journeys to Brazil, though she's sorely tempted by Robert Cummings as an engineer fallen into hard times and the bottle. Rathbone, meanwhile, murderously escapes to Rio.... The plotline lacks tension and, save for Rathbone's Sten-gun elocution, there's not much acting to savor either -- though Gurie sings a few songs in decadent nightclub settings. Some viewers might be happy to hear them.

Well, that was a little bit boring. The cast are good - except Robert Cummings (Bill) as a disgraced engineer who has taken refuge in Rio. His drunken scenes are painful to sit through. He is the new love interest for café singer Sigrid Gurie (Irene) who is plying her trade in Rio as a way to be near her convicted fraudster of a husband Basil Rathbone (Reynard) housed in a jail on a nearby island. She intends to wait for his release but love has other ideas. Meanwhile, Rathbone escapes....

Where on earth is this Rio that the film is based in? I see no Portuguese speaking characters. What I do see is a lot of Spanish speaking Mexican types. There is obviously a place called Rio somewhere in Mexico. If this was Rio, Brazil, we needed some Carmen Miranda entertainment. As an aside, I can't stand Simon Le Bon's voice, so thankfully, the Duran Duran song "Rio" has wisely been left off the film's soundtrack.

The story is only interesting when Rathbone is on screen and the misrepresentation of Rio is criminally poor. We needed to see a tutti-frutti hat and less of Cummings' awful attempt at a drunkard. Victor McLaglen (Dirk) plays Rathbone's close friend with homosexual overtones (no man is that dedicated to another man without a love arrow from Cupid) and he does have a good moment right at the film's end.

A Parisian swindler (Basil Rathbone) sentenced to Devil's Island eventually escapes to find his wife (Goldwyn Edsel Sigrid Gurie) has fallen in love with another man (Robert Cummings)...

The year 1939 is considered a high water mark in Golden Age Hollywood's studio era but RIO is a movie I doubt we'll hear much about in the future (godknows, I never did in the past). It's an odd-ball Universal "A" with a "name" cast (Basil Rathbone, Victor McLaglen, Robert Cummings, Leo Carillo, Billy Gilbert, and, at the time, Sigrid Gurie) and probably a "programmer" (a movie shown as the bottom half of a double-bill in big theaters and by itself in smaller venues) that came and went rather quickly. The IMDb labels it "film noir" but it's not -not that I could see, anyway. If anything, it's quite possibly a "proto-noir" but that's only because of the director, German émigré John Brahm (THE LODGER, HANGOVER SQUARE, THE LOCKET) and the fact the protagonist is an "anti-hero", something unusual for movies in 1939. Rathbone's the star -it's his adventures we're following- and being France's answer to Bernie Madoff and a cold-blooded murderer made him no less likable. Basil was right at home as a French fancy pants but making with the beefcake was pushing it a bit, especially when stripped to the waist on a chain gang or making a daring escape through the swamps. The setting was quite ambitious (Paris, Devil's Island, various nightclubs, the South American jungle, Rio during Carnivale) and nicely realized, considering, but those four songs were there, no doubt, to pad it out -or promote Sigrid Gurie, who warbled three of them (which was two too many if you ask me). Siggie was launched the year before by Samuel Goldwyn as "The Norwegian Garbo" when he starred her in THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO and if her talents had been more than modest, it probably wouldn't have mattered when the press later found out she was born in Brooklyn -but it did and she faded fairly quickly. I'd give it a "recommended if it's not going out of your way" -provided it ever pops up anywhere.

A bleak and dark drama of a swindler who moves from the pinnacles of fortune in Paris down to misery in a chain gang in the swamps of a Brazilian penal colony, from where he escapes in desperate longing for his wife, whom he knows is in Rio as a celebrated night club singer - she already was in Paris, and she probably moved to Rio just to be closer to him, in case he would escape, but the film never tells this, although it should have informed the audience of the obvious. In Rio, though, she is courted by an alcoholic former piano tuner who turned engineer and failed with a great project, so he took to drinking. There are some very funny scenes with him. He falls desperately in love with her, but then Basil Rathbone succeeds in escaping and finds her again - too late, it seems, for everything. It is difficult to classify this semi-noir of great and exotic adventure, but it definitely is interesting, and they could have made much more of it. Basil Rathbone is excellent, as always, and so is Victor McLaglen, while Sigrid Gurie only makes you long for Marlene Dietrich, who would have made a part like this so much better.

"Reynard" (Basil Rathbone) is quite an unscrupulous business man who comes a cropper when it turns out that quite a lot of his collateral for huge great loans - well, the ink is still wet! It's only a matter of time before he's caught and punished, and so is promptly sent off to the infamous Devil's Island prison to rot. Meantime, his loving wife (Sigrid Gurie) thinks he's dead and gets on with her life with "Bill" (Robert Cummings). When her letters stop coming, he reckons on the worst and so "Reynard" determines to escape and make it back home - except, well he's not ready for the shock awaiting him nor she for his reaction. Victor McLaglen takes up a supporting role as his best pal "Dirk", but he isn't really used enough to make too much difference to what is really a rather unremarkable melodrama until the last fifteen minutes when we reach a denouement that's a bit rushed, but allows Rathbone to use his menacing voice to create just an hint of tenseness. I'm not too sure the island jungle looked terribly realistic, and he must have been a really good swimmer - but those are technicalities for this enjoyable, but forgettable, drama.