L'avventuriero di Hong Kong

Even toward the end of his marvelous career, Clark Gable's screen persona of the charming, irresistible bounder was untarnished. Unhappy with the roles MGM was giving him, he did not renew his contract. "Soldier of Fortune," which Gable subsequently did for 20th Century Fox, is a big budget, good-looking movie with big stars, none of which can hide the fact that it's a routine story that John Hodiak could have done in black and white in 1950 and probably did.

Susan Hayward plays a woman who arrives in Hong Kong to look for her photographer husband (Gene Barry) who has slipped into China illegally. She runs into of a bunch of sleazy characters and finally meets Henry Lee (Gable), a soldier of fortune with money and contacts. He's an older version of Rhett Butler - out for himself but capable of goodness as well. He falls hard for Hayward and becomes more determined than ever to find her husband so he doesn't have to compete with a ghost. With two such attractive stars, it's obvious what's going to happen.

The stars and the supporting cast - Michael Rennie, Tom Tully, Anna Sten et al - are all very good. It's a beautifully photographed film that undoubtedly looked great on the big screen with its Technicolor panoramas of Hong Kong, but alas, it's not very exciting. Gable looks fantastic and immaculate in his white suit, his smile as dimpled and his voice as gruff as ever, and Hayward, not the warmest actress who ever lived, is excellent as a concerned and confused woman. They work very well together.

It's hard to say the movie is not worth seeing because as excellent as some of our actors are today, there are no Gables. There was only one - and checking him out is always worthwhile.

This typically glossy Fox production from the 1950s, hinging on equal parts star power and exotic locations, was another title I had missed out on several times along the years; after its recent SE DVD release, I made it a point to catch up with the film next time around.

Anyway, for an adventure film, it's rather talky and, even if just 96 minutes long, it devotes too much attention to irrelevant subplots involving secondary characters (including gruff bar owner Tom Tully and a comeback role for former Swedish star Anna Sten) to the ultimate detriment of major ones: in fact, Susan Hayward – who gets to interact with most of the cast – is given more screen-time than Clark Gable (which is even more surprising when one remembers that this was Gable's first non-MGM film in 20 years!) and, in spite of their billing, both Michael Rennie and Gene Barry don't have a lot to do until the climax (though, in the latter's case, it's understandable as he's a prisoner in the hands of Communist China).

With respect to the narrative itself (Ernest K. Gann adapted his own novel for the screen), the film seems to fall between several stools – action, romance, politics – but, with its eye firmly on the box-office, this superficial and sometimes contrived approach ends up satisfying no one. That said, it's a generally entertaining ride – and Dmytryk handles the proceedings in an efficient, if highly impersonal, manner.

In the end, I'd say that SOLDIER OF FORTUNE is the least of the 3 Fox titles released as part of the rather expensive "The Clark Gable Collection" – the others being William Wellman's THE CALL OF THE WILD (1935) and Raoul Walsh's THE TALL MEN (1955; disappointingly, this is the only one not to feature an accompanying Audio Commentary).

In search of her missing photographer husband, Jane Hoyt (Susan Hayward) arrives in Hong Kong and learns at the U.S. Consulate that her mission is futile, that neither the United States nor the British government can help her...

She turns in despair to Hank Lee (Clark Gable), an American soldier of fortune who runs a profitable smuggling business on each side of the bamboo curtain...

Hank is attracted to Jane's sultry red-haired beauty... He develops a personal interest in the lady, but when she repulses his advances, he realizes that the only way to win her over is to rescue her husband... Aided by an incorruptible English harbor policeman, Inspector Merryweather (Michael Rennie), he discovers that her husband is being held prisoner near Canton, where he is being brainwashed...

Hank prepares to rescue Hoyt in his powered junk, Chicago, and is annoyed to find Inspector Merryweather aboard... Since the inspector knows the nature of Hank's merchandise, he was held prisoner aboard the sailing vessel... Later, however, when Hank's crewmen desert rather than enter Red China, Merryweather, realizing that this is a rescue mission, offers his help...

Clark Gable was getting a little too old for these kinds of actions, but the film holds attention with its good yarn and its interesting locations...

Hayward looks different without her famous long tresses... This was her second movie with the tall, gaunt Michael Rennie... She had one scene with him in 'Demetrius and the Gladiators.'

Ironically, this anticommunist adventure film was directed by Edward Dmytryk, one of the 'Hollywood Ten.'

This is one of those early Twentieth Century Fox CinemaScope potboilers where the studio sent (most of) the cast and crew to actual locations and took full DeLuxe Color advantage of places that most of the potential audience would never visit in real life. So, the bustling and already festooned-with-highrises city of Hong Kong is the principal setting for the jumping-off point of the plot. It's pretty obvious that Gable is actually there in Hong Kong for a few of the shots but Susan Hayward, embroiled in a custody battle after her divorce from Lex Barker, didn't dare leave the U.S., or her chances of caring for her children by that marriage might have been scotched. Therefore long shots and a few medium ones of her were cleverly arranged with a double and she performs all of her closeups, et cetera, safely ensconced on the Fox soundstages in West Los Angeles and against some rather good back projections.

Gable and Hayward are a pretty good team and Michael Rennie lends his usual elegant support. Gene Barry has a rather thankless role as Susan's eventually rejected husband, and the supporting cast, including the Asians appearing as various Chinese, are all convincing under Edward Dmytryk's workmanlike direction.

For me the real stars, however, are Leo Tover's excellent use of the CinemaScope lenses and, once again, Hugo Friedhofer's atmospheric score. In my opinion, no other Hollywood master of the full orchestral enhancement was able to cue the audience and call up some real emotion with so few bars of music. This film is a sterling example of his art. Just check out the closing few moments of the film. He could send you out of the theater convinced you'd seen something even better than what you had actually viewed!

Fiery Jane Hoyt, played by Susan Hayward of the blazing red hair, arrives in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong in search of her husband, Louis, a photographer who disappeared while on a shoot in Mainland China. Louis, played by Gene Barry, entered China illegally without a visa and has been detained by the Communist authorities. Hayward enlists the aid of a shipping magnate with connections, Clark Gable, to locate her husband and bring him out. While the chemistry between Hayward and Gable is lukewarm at best, an on-screen romance ensues, which undercuts the credibility of Hayward's portrayal of a loving faithful wife in search of her missing husband. The gruff mature Gable, who incongruously has adopted three Asian children, makes the moves on Hayward, who stoically receives his kisses and allows him to hold her hand across a table. Actually, the coolness between Gable and Hayward is a torrid fire compared to the freeze between Barry and Hayward. Thus, both the motivation for Hayward's journey to Hong Kong in search of her missing husband and her attraction to Gable are undercut by the lack of warmth between the actors; what the script says and what the performers suggest are miles apart. When not being pursued by Gable or other wolves on the prowl, Hayward searches the city for information on her husband. The search brings her into contact with a number of supporting players, including Michael Rennie, Alex D'Arcy, and Tom Tully, and several distracting subplots, which only serve to remind viewers that the film was adapted from a novel by Ernest K Gann, who also wrote the script.

Director Edward Dmytryk keeps the action scenes going at a decent pace, and Hayward's search is initially intriguing. However, even Dmytryk can do little with the unconvincing love affair or the lack of chemistry between his three stars, who acquit themselves professionally, but no more. Leo Tover's colorful cinematography captures an exotic, but now bygone, Hong Kong of junks, sampans, and stunning vistas of mountains and bays. Set in the 1950's, "Soldier of Fortune" would make an ideal double bill with "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," a more successful romantic film that shares both location and period with the Gable-Hayward vehicle. The Dmytryk film has much in its favor: an exotic locale, fine cinematography, two top stars, an able supporting cast, and a fairly good story. Unfortunately, "Soldier of Fortune" is one of those movies that is worth seeing, but less than the sum of its parts.