Macao

Down off the southern coast of China, about an hour and a half from Hong Kong by small motor launch, sits the little island of Macao. It gets wet in the rainy season and hot in any season. Its population is more varied than that of New York City. For years it has been a noisy, busy trading center through which the West did business with the East, and both made money. No adventurer worth his 38 hasn't been there sometime. Along the South China coast they say that all roads lead to Macao. It seems a shame that RKO's director, Josef vonSternberg, never went there. Macao could have made a good movie.

As it was, Director vonSternberg only visited Sound Stage 17, the one cluttered with all that scenery left over from Hong Kong, Saigon, Maylaya,andCaptain China, carrying formula six--"Exotic Movies"--in his pocket. Sticking to the letter of the recipe, he called in a tough guy, Robert Mitchum, and a seductress, Jane Russell, who really want to spend the rest of their lives on a rubber plantation in peace and senility. He added a nice, but clever, international cop, William Bendix, who gets stabbed, and rounded out the cast with a glassy-eyed, crooked, gambling-hall owner surrounded by inscrutable orientals who paddle after him and stab nice but clever international policemen. This crew wades through the plot outlined in formula number six, involving money, beautiful women, money, diamond necklaces, money, dice games, money, motor yachts, and money.

The dialogue is quick and witty, ranging from "Okay, wise guy, don't say we didn't warn you," to, "Honey, I've never met any girl like you before." A subtle mind should be able to keep up with this reparte without any trouble.

Director vonSternberg keeps interest and excitement high throughout the picture, however, by an old, Confucius-like beggar, who masters the minor fault of being totally blind by telling all the characters what the rest are doing at any given moment. The audience sits, fascinated to the end, wondering how he did it. But with a shrewd twist, in which the director daringly departed from formula six, the movie never explains this feat, thus keeping the audience in suspense even after the lights go up.