Trade Winds (1938)

The film can be an enigma as well as perplexing. It starts off with Joan Bennett,a socialite, discovering that her sister has committed suicide. She goes to the boyfriend of the deceased, a cad played by Sidney Blackmer and she proceeds to blast him. Fleeing the scene she is chased around the globe by detective Frederic March and his assistant Ralph Bellamy.Believe it or not, Ann Sothern, March's wily secretary steals every scene she is in. She really displays a depth of comedy that would follow her throughout her career. Of course, she was the right fit to portray a secretary, as she did that years later up in television's "Private Secretary."The picture succumbs somewhat to the endless back and forth chase, and the inevitable March falling for the accused murderer. When he suddenly turns on her after they both flee, it appears that something is up, and that something is suddenly trying to exonerate Bennett. This is not fully explained.

Joan Bennett, a flaming platinum blond, is accused of murdering the scion of a rich California newspaper owner. The owner's name is Bruhm with an umlaut and sounds absolutely nothing like "William Randolph Hearst." Nevertheless, the murder puts the San Francisco Police Department in a tizzy.The detective assigned to the case is the near-sighted and totally square Ralph Bellamy whose theories of the crime have the virtue of being consistently wrong. Bellamy doesn't drink, smoke, swear, or wear anything but neat tweeds and a boater. The police chief, Thomas Mitchell, having little confidence in Bellamy, also hires a private detective to work with him. The private detective is the suave Frederick March. It's always nice to see March in a white suit and pith helmet when he visits exotic places.The pair of detectives, dogged by March's secretary, Ann Sothern, track Bennett all over Asia -- from Hawaii when it was still "T.H.", to Japan, to Shanghai, to Singapore, and finally Bombay. In each place, March pursues his quarry by getting to know the local belles, while Bellamy huffs and blows his cheeks with indignation. The sets are all in the studio but the rear projections are sometimes interesting. That Shanghai street manages to really look like the street that runs along the waterfront.They catch up with Bennett somewhere along the way, but she's changed her hair color and Bellamy has no idea who she is, while March not only recognizes her but falls instantly in love with her, and the other way round. The romance is boring but the picaresque story has its slight charms.Gee, this was shot in 1937 and Japan is still full of geisha girls. And Shanghai is not yet desolate. And Singapore is full of white guys in white suits, kind of running things.Frederick March was always an underrated actor but I thought he was better in dramatic roles. Bennett -- well, I don't know where she picked up those faux English phones -- "I cahn't do it" -- when she was born just across the Hudson from New York.Dorothy Comingore is buried somewhere in the cast. A few years later she was to make another movie about the death of an important newspaperman, in which she played Wife Number Two, Mrs. Charles Foster Kane.Dorothy Parker is listed among the writers but she must have done it for the paycheck, or during off moments while visiting Robert Benchley in Los Angeles, because the script has few genuine tag lines and no acid or sophistication. Well, the dialog does give Ann Sothern a couple of hyperlearnedisms. "Whom is she?" I take it that getting drunk isn't a sign of sophistication. Unless, like me, the character becomes extremely witty and utterly winning.

Several years before anyone thought of the film Trade Winds, director Tay Garnett did a round the world tour and took a camera crew with him. They shot miles of beautiful travelogue type footage and Garnett had it in his mind to use it. According to the Citadel Film Series book The Films of Fredric March, Garnett sold the idea to independent producer Walter Wanger. Who thereupon commissioned a story to be written around these films and naturally it would be starring his wife Joan Bennett. All that background you see in Trade Winds is what Garnett shot years earlier.Trade Winds is a strange film it can't quite make up its mind to be a mystery, comedy, or drama it truly defies classification. One thing we do know is that right away we're given information regarding the forensics that Joan Bennett is innocent. If she had not run, but stayed behind she'd have known right away and we'd have had no film.But run she does and private detective Fredric March is put on her trail. He sure needs the money as well as he and secretary Ann Sothern owe a lot of bills. The weakness of the plot is made up for a lot by the supporting performances of both Ann Sothern and Ralph Bellamy. Sothern is not in the tradition of private eye secretaries like Effie in The Maltese Falcon. She turns out to be just as good a gumshoe as March and she's a person of shifting loyalties.Which is unlike Ralph Bellamy who might easily qualify for being the dumbest cop the movies ever portrayed. I could have seen him being commandant of the Police Academy forty years later. He's so earnest in such a Dudley Doo-Right manner he's positively hilarious. Sothern and Bellamy really do carry this film.March is a charming rascal and Bennett a beautiful and vulnerable victim, but if you watch Trade Winds I know you'll enjoy Sothern and Bellamy most of all.

Was there ever a more relaxed, charming rogue than Frederic March? He would have been a perfect James Bond, had the role been available to him in the '30s. As it is, he made do spectacularly with this one: he's Sam Wye, a former SFPD detective, hired to find and bring back the luminous Joan Bennett, who's suspected of murdering Sidney Blackmer... When her car goes into the Bay, she swims ashore and goes on the run... The action roves as the trade winds of the title, straying from the piers of the city by the Bay to Honolulu, Singapore, Tokyo, Hanoi, and Colombo, Ceylon. Ralph Bellamy,side-hick to March, sez: "Colombo? I thought that was in Ohio..." Ann Sothern is glamorous, and Joan Bennett sizzles. This is the movie in which she dyed her hair black -- and then kept it dark for the next 50 years...leaving the blonde Bennett roles to sister Constance. As a glimpse of pre-War Asia, and an insight into the world before terrorism, this is a charming and lovely memory. You'll yearn for the time when cruise attire was more than sweatsuits and sneakers...and all this with dialog by Dorothy Parker!