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Howard Hawks inventing "Hawksian," with material refined from What Price Glory? toward Popeye, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Only Angels Have Wings (and Lethal Weapon and My Beautiful Laundrette) at the service of a great queer punchline ("a love story between two men, really"). Victor McLaglen's ship docks in Amsterdam and he consults his little black book, one Dutch "skirt" has her entire family by her side while another boasts the mark of a rival, the sign of an anchor and a heart; Rio de Janeiro is sketched like Bizet's Spain, the sailor cozies up to a local spitfire until he notices his nemesis' emblem. Their paths cross with a daring gag -- McLaglen picks a brawl with fellow sea-hobo Robert Armstrong in a Central American cantina and, awakening the next morning side by side in jail, inspects his mug in the mirror only to find the familiar insignia from Armstrong's ring branded on his jaw. They pay each other's bail in order to continue their fracas, and become buds after falling off the harbor mid-scuffle; bonding is accepted through fisticuffs, with McLaglen ritualistically jerking Armstrong's finger back into place following a fight. Hawks' compositions are already startlingly plainspoken, although he gives himself a European touch (a crossroads between Variety and Pandora's Box, namely) in the Marseilles carnival scene, where Louise Brooks, "Neptune's Bride," dives from a tower into a tub; McLaglen is splashed, and smitten. "A ship divided by land from water, friends divided by a woman": McLaglen sheds a quiet, tiny tear at the departing vessel, then profusely polishes his new fiancée's pump as the camera pans to find Armstrong and Brooks on the sofa, him trying to warn his pal of her tainted past and her caressing his leg. An embryonic work, sure, with Brooks inexcusably given short shrift in a crudely drawn triangle, yet its roughness showcases Hawks's disconcertingly modern sexual politics at their rawest -- when McLaglen breaks down after seeing Armstrong's tattoo on Brooks's arm, whose betrayal is he weeping over? In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |