Thanks to the unwritten dogmas of “political correctness”, Hollywood moviemakers these days are supposed to avoid ethnic or racial stereotypes in their films. We might argue whether Hollywood puts considerable effort into this, or whether overzealous implementation of those rules affects the quality of recent films, but most people would agree that Hollywood has made significant progress, at least compared with previous decades. The reputation of some older Hollywood films is often tarnished (or controversial, at best) because of negative portrayals of certain ethnic and racial groups. This is especially the case with films made during WW2, notably those that deal with Japanese. One such example is Across the Pacific, a 1942 spy thriller directed by the great John Huston. An additional reason why this film often gets overlooked is because Huston used the cast and crew of The Maltese Falcon, and many film scholars see Across the Pacific as nothing more than a much inferior and rather insignificant follow-up to Huston’s true masterpiece.
The plot, based on the screenplay by Richard Macaulay, starts on 17th November 1941, a few weeks before American entry into WW2. Rick Leland (played by Humphrey Bogart) is a U.S. army officer who has been dishonourably discharged from service for embezzling regimental funds. Since soldiering happens to be his life, he travels to Halifax in order to offer his services to the Canadians, but his bad reputation precedes him. Out of desperation, he decides to join Chiang Kai-shek’s army and, in order to travel across the Pacific, he boards the Japanese freighter “Genoa Maru”. A charming Canadian girl, Alberta Marlow (played by Mary Astor), boards the same vessel, and Leland soon falls in love with her. Their shipboard romance is shadowed by the presence of the elegant but nevertheless sinister Doctor Lorenz (played by Sydney Greenstreet), a university professor who used to live in the Far East for 30 years and who does not hide his strong pro-Japanese feelings. Lorenz is aware of Leland’s bitterness towards the US government and wants to use it to recruit the ex-soldier for some covert activities in Panama.
Across the Pacific represents the craftsmanship of Hollywood’s Golden Era at its best – the plot is a rather interesting combination of international spy intrigue, melodrama and humour. The cast of The Maltese Falcon delivers another great performance – Bogart is quite believable as a disgraced officer and has incredibly good chemistry with Mary Astor, this time playing a somewhat simpler but definitely more charming character than in the previous film. Greenstreet is very impressive as the villain, albeit not very different from characters he had played in many similar films. The dialogue has a lot of great lines, including some not-so-subtle Freudian references (especially when characters compare the size of their guns). However, the ending of the film is very weak – an interesting plot is drowned in cheap melodrama and a not very believable method of providing the obligatory Happy End. Perhaps Huston is not to be blamed for this, since he left the shooting in order to go to war and left the directing to Vincent Sherman, who was not up to the task.
The depiction of Japanese characters, although questionable by our standards, may be useful for those who want to study inter-racial relations in 1940s America. The Japanese are portrayed as evil, insidious and utterly alien to American society. Attempts at integration or assimilation are bound to fail, which is suggested by the scene in a Panamanian cinema featuring Japanese immigrants preferring technically inferior movies from their old country to more glamorous Hollywood productions. The moviemaker’s scepticism towards individuals overcoming their cultural and racial background is also underlined with the character of Lorenz’s henchman Joe Totsuiko (played by Victor Sen Young), who wants to look and sound more American than Americans themselves only to become a caricature; in the final scenes, Doctor Lorenz, who made a great deal of effort to claim the superiority of Oriental culture, fails miserably in his attempt to follow the example of his Japanese role models. This worldview might look unacceptable to most of today’s audience, but it is presented very skilfully, which is another reason why Across the Pacific should be seen as something more than simple WW2 propaganda.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on September 22nd 2000)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/18790-across-the-pacific?language=en-US
Critic: AA
