Tokio Joe

Several years ago I stumbled upon a 35 cent biography of Humphrey Bogart written shortly after his death. In it he comments on many of his films, including Tokyo Joe. "Utterly worthless picture" he noted. Many critics agree as they dismiss this piece of hokum about what happens when a former soldier returns to what was his "home town" before the war. Thing have changed. It is not the paradise it once was to him and it is certainly no "Rick's" Instead of "As Time Goes By" we hear "These Foolish Things," a better song but not nearly as famous.

Tokyo Joe was made not long after Bogey had left Warner Brothers and it has more than a whiff of a "message picture" that strikes to find some meaning in postwar Tokyo. But like "House Of Bamboo" this film works not only as melodrama but as historical artifact of a period that is now forgotten. We don't think of the Japanese as a defeated power. Ever since the Honda Accord and the Toyota Camry started blowing away American competition we have thought of the Japanese as a superpower economically, not as a crippled defeated country. This film captures a mood that is rarely expressed in movies and it captures it with rather high production values. The rest of the cast isn't much but they play it straight and thus Tokyo Joe stands up even better after the initial viewing. The DVD transfer is very good and it remains a worthy addition to the Bogart canon.

Tokyo Joe has Casablanca influences in several of the characters and scenes. Bogart must have figured that if he could achieve great success with Casablanca, why not repeat the formula for Tokyo Joe? He was partially correct, but the film is obviously not as compelling as Casablanca. Florence Marly (who is curiously a look-a-like for real life wife, Lauren Bacall) is just not up to the emotional depth of Ingrid Bergman. Bogey is fine in his role; and Alexander Knox is good as the noble husband of his old flame. Sound familiar? It should; it's pretty much the same triangle you had in Casablanca. The old flame now married to a noble guy who is at risk. And Bogey has to do the patriotic thing. Not quite scene for scene, but close enough. For the most part, the formula still works again, despite the relatively sterile Marly. Be sure to catch this Bogart film; he does a fine job.

Humphrey Bogart's lesser watched films are so often passed by because the standard for Bogart films is so incredibly high. Is this film as great as "To Have and Have Not"? No it isn't. On the other hand I guarantee you it is more sophisticated and interesting to watch than 90% of the films that came out last year.

People often seem to over look the unique virtues of this film as an interesting film in history. Coming so shortly on the heels of World War 2 one would expect to find a certain amount of racism towards the Japanese and yet (unlike slightly later films like Sayonara) it is almost devoid of any remarks of that kind.

Humphrey Bogart is a superb actor as always as is the rest of the cast. The plot is well written and the direction style suited well to the film. Over all I highly recommend that anyone who wants a sharp and fun movie check this one out just don't expect it to be the classic that "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" or that one of the many other "classic" films he made was. It is nonetheless worth watching and, to my mind at least, quite a bit better than the cookie cutter system they use for suspense films now.

Picture Bogart's Richard Blaine character renamed Joe Barrett for this film. Instead of Casablanca, he's got a place in Tokyo just like Rick's named Tokyo Joe's. World War II interrupts things and he gets out of Japan and goes in the Army Air Corps where he spends a good deal of time bombing a lot of Japanese real estate. Including Tokyo which because of the wooden buildings pre World War II was particularly vulnerable to Curtis LeMay's incendiaries. It's a miracle, but his place survived intact and he'd like to resettle in Tokyo and pick up where he left off.

Bogey gets an even better piece of news. His Ingrid Bergman who he married before the war and thought dead is alive. He goes to her and finds out she divorced him for reasons the plot really doesn't go into and is now married to a high civilian official with the American occupying authority, read MacArthur. That would be Alexander Knox in the Paul Henreid part and Ingrid, in this case Florence Marly has a daughter now.

Still Bogey who would now like to make money as a civilian flier as well is being used at cross purposes by the American Army Intelligence and by some Japanese led by Sessue Hayakawa who haven't adjusted to losing the war.

Tokyo Joe follows in plot lines laid out by Casablanca, but it sure treads softly in those giant footsteps. It was nice to see Sessue Hayakawa appear for the first time in an American film since silent days. He became a star in the early silent era in Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat and left for Japan with the coming of sound where he stayed a popular film star right through World War II.

Hayakawa came here for Tokyo Joe. Other than establishing newsreel shots, this whole production was done on Columbia's back lot. Humphrey Bogart gives it the old Casablanca try, but he must have been wondering why he left Warner Brothers he was certainly doing a lot of the same stuff over at his home studio.

Bogart is a former nightclub owner who returns to postwar Japan to pick up his life with a wife (Florence Marly) he had deserted, only to find that she had remarried and was the mother of his seven-year-old daughter…

In the ensuing complications, Bogart is placed in a position where he must smuggle some Japanese war criminals back into Japan or his daughter will be killed…

Bogart is much less convincing than in his "Across the Pacific" days, where he was also required to deal with villainous Japanese…

For an actor who had belabored the point that he had been forced to do too many bad films because he had no control over the properties, it is disappointing to see him making extremely bad films now that he did have full control...