Le rendez-vous de Hong Kong

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.'

The 50s was Hollywood's probably worst-ever decade, the highlights of that period very ironically being mostly low-budget, so-bad-they're-good sci-fi and monster movies. Even though SOF isn't by any means a brilliant exception to the rule, it does offer something that a number of 50s big-studio movies did have: beautiful women (in this case one woman) and great Technicolor visuals. Susan Hayward has never looked better: she is quite simply stunning. The coastal night scenes are visually impeccable. The story isn't too cheesy for that period and refreshingly presents communists as the bad guys. (The movie was made post-McCarthy-clean-up so there was a pleasant hiatus that lasted several years regarding left-wing propaganda films that glorified communists or at least tried to soften the brutality of such regimes.) Clark Gable, if a little old, in the lead role can't hurt either.

Compare 40s/50s beauties like Liz Taylor, Olivia de Havilland, and Susan Hayward to modern-day wrecks like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz. Sad...

Soldier of Fortune marked Clark Gable's first film away from MGM after his contract was not renewed. 20th Century Fox did right by him, gave him a film to shoot on location in Hong Kong and an actress who was at the height of her career as a new leading lady in Susan Hayward.

This was the second big epic film they shot in Hong Kong that year, the other being Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. Unlike the William Holden- Jennifer Jones epic, Soldier of Fortune leans more to adventure and intrigue than romance.

Hayward's husband Gene Barry is a prisoner of the Chinese government, apparently having taken some pictures he shouldn't have as a freelance photo journalist. Hayward's in Hong Kong to try and affect a rescue and she comes up against some unscrupulous types including Gable. Gable's more interested in her, but helping the husband's rescue is a package deal.

I would have hoped that with the one and only teaming of Gable and Hayward a better story could have been found. Soldier of Fortune isn't a bad film, hardly the worst thing either of them did, but in essence it's really a souped up Grade B adventure saga. The class of the players make it seem more than it is. Plus the fact it was done on location as opposed to the backlot of 20th Century Fox.

Soldier of Fortune has a good cast of character actors. Look for some good performances by Michael Rennie as the British inspector, Alexander D'Arcy as a conniving French rogue and Tom Tully as a slimy influence peddler.

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.

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!