The Stuff Of Dreams, Part Two-Humphrey Bogart’s Across The Pacific

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

   

Across The Pacific, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor,  Sydney Greenstreet, directed by John Huston, 1942  

 

What’s all this stuff, part two no less, about dreams in the title of this review of Humphrey Bogart’s Across The Pacific. Well, haven’t we seen this crew before, I mean, Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet in the film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (and John Huston directing). A film where Bogie as classic hard-boiled private detective Sam Spade has to ruffle a few of  Ms. Astor’s feathers after figuring out that she had left a long  trail of men who helped her behind. Had to break her of that habit of leaving those men face down in some gulley all shot to hell while she was looking for the stuff of dreams, that damn jeweled falcon that had everybody wiggy.

Last I heard once the full body count was in they were getting ready to put her pretty little face in a noose out in California. Yeah, Sam had plenty of sleepless winter nights over that one, including some second-guessing his decision to lower the hammer on her, but he figured better that than looking over his shoulder every time he left a room waiting for an off-hand slug. Oh and Mr. Greenstreet as the Fat Man ( he was built for these nefarious high-end  con man/spy roles by build and by voice) looking for that same pot of gold and not fussy about how he got it, or over whose dead body he had to get it. There was treachery enough for a lifetime in that one in order to get to that stuff of dreams. 

That was then and now we have in this film a different version of the stuff of dreams, here the dream of empire, of world domination by the Japanese with the aid of one Anglo partisan, Doctor Lorenz (the role Greenstreet played I told you he was built for such parts) who is working hard to put together a plan to weaken American defenses in the Panama Canal Zone for what would appear to the inevitable future Japanese invasion (according to some notes the site of this bombing in the film was originally Pearl Harbor but note the date of the film and you will see why that was quickly changed). Naturally on the American side, the Bogie side, all efforts must be made to stop this in its tracks. Here is how it was done:                          

Captain Rick Leland (Bogie’s role) was cashiered out of the American Army on corruption charges. He had been a career officer and strangely cannot find a job, a military job, in a world either at war or about to be and so he heads west, west to the Pacific (although the Pacific never actually comes into play in the plot), and maybe unknown there can find work he is fitted for. So he takes a Japanese freighter heading that way from Halifax after being rejected by the Canadians due to his reputation (Jesus, the Canadians rejected him, what the hell was going on they needed whoever they could get). On the tub he meets the fetching Alberta (Ms. Astor’s role) and they play the cat and mouse romance game, innocent romance by today’s standards. He also meets the good Doctor who moves might and main to enlist Rick who has convinced the good Doctor that he is basically a soldier of fortune, in his plans, plans that are unspecified but mean nothing but trouble.     

Of course Rick’s whole story is phooey as he is working as an American agent trying to block any Japanese moves that may be afoot. And there are plenty. It seems in a film where everybody is knee deep in treachery and intrigue that most of the crew and others on the freighter are part of this big plan to blow up the Panama Canal Locks which were a big deal then, maybe now too. What the good Doctor and his agents had been doing was sending machinery to an outlying planation in Panama where they were painfully and on a tedious but tenacious long-term basis constructing an airplane to deliver a torpedo to do the nasty deed. This action had the approval of the emperor so much so that one of his princely sons was to do the act, was to pilot that jerry-bilt plane. The prince when the deal went sour turned out  to have been on the freighter all the time as a servant to Lorenz. Here is the kicker though Alberta turned out to be, beside flirtatious, the daughter of the plantation owner whose land had been used to do the construction. Naturally in a patriotic film like this no Japanese are going to be successful against Rick’s determination to stop the nefarious act. So much for that little exercise in the stuff of dreams, empire size. And of course he does and, off-handedly, wins Alberta as well.

As Rick and Alberta go off into the sunset I have this nagging feeling that I liked it much better when Bogie and Ms. Astor were adversaries, when Sam Spade had to decide whether he wanted to live with newspaper around his bed at all times just in case Bridget got fidgety, rooty-toot-toot fidgety, or turn her over to the coppers. Liked it better too, much better, when Mr. Greenstreet was in the stuff of dreams business strictly for himself.