Tokyo Joe

This could have been a great movie. Post World War II location movies have an intriguing atmosphere. Post-war Japan offered a terrific setting, but the obvious backlot location, with cheesy process shots trying to pass for a Japanese location, ruins the effect.

Alexander Knox is great, sardonic but principled, and Sessue Hayakawa is deliciously malign. Florence Marly is a poor substitute for Lisbeth Scott -- or couldn't Bogey get his own wife Lauren Bacall to work for scale? Bogey himself looks a little shopworn. Even the love child is fat-faced and unappealing.

Compromise pervades the film, from the cardboard sets to the hack director. Because it was cheap, exterior shots were minimal, and so the action scenes, which could have made for a more exciting story, give way to lots of talky interior stuff.

As the studio system weakened, star-owned production companies, like Bogart's, Burt Lancaster's and Alan Ladd's, were in vogue. Stars can't resist the chance to star in a movie where they don't have to take direction, so they often hire weak directors, usually with dismal results. This is one of them.

Satisfying Bogart vehicle has our hero as a veteran seeking to return to his prewar life in Tokyo as part-owner of a jazz bar ("Tokyo Joe's") and also as the husband of his former diva (Marley). Inconveniently, she's already divorced him and married a lawyer in the provisional government (Knox). In order to remain the country, Bogey starts an air freight service with some shady Yakuza types who eventually blackmail him into importing war criminals. The bait is his daughter, who he's just met.

Very sentimental, with Bogart's performance dead on the mark and showing some sides of his persona which had not been explored before. Produced by Bogart's company, Santana Productions.

"Tokyo Joe" from 1949 was the first film that was allowed to film in post-war Japan. Produced by Bogart's Santana Productions, it's just fair.

Bogart plays Joe Barrett, who returns to Japan after the war to start a business. While there, he discovers that his wife Trina (Florence Marly) is still alive. However, when he finds her, he discovers that she has divorced him and remarried a man named Mark Landis (Alexander Knox). Joe is determined to get her back and needs to extend his visa; he is approached by Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa) who wants him to front an airline freight company for him. He would be importing frozen frogs. However, there is some additional freight, and for that, Kimura blackmails Joe by telling him what Trina was involved in during the war, which he will make public if Joe doesn't work with him.

This film bears a passing resemblance to Casablanca, and Bogart is clearly going through a transition which would lead to some of his greatest films and performances in the '50s. Rick of Casablanca is clearly pretty tired out. Being a small company, Santana Productions did not make big films or hire actors equal to Bogart, so the effect here is mediocre.

Florence Marly as Trina is a disaster - cold, very haughty looking, without much acting ability. It's impossible to see why Joe fell for her in the first place. She is no Ilse Lund, and she has no chemistry with Bogart. Her intentions are very unclear as well - as an actress, it doesn't look like she made any decisions about the character. Alexander Knox and Sessue Hayakawa are very good. Bogart, for my money, is always terrific.

Definitely worth seeing for the Japanese location and for Bogart. It's not horrendous, but considering that Bogart starred in so many classic films, it's not that good.

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.

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.