World for Ransom (1954) is a not very engaging noir that takes place in Singapore. It gets attention because it is Robert Aldrich’s second flick, although for some strange reason, he is only listed as the producer in the credits. No director is cited. Nevertheless, I find myself thinking about it a lot, sucked in by the semi-mindless allure of cinema’s limitless network of cultural referents. Movies! A waste of time, but I spend a lot of time on them.
Dan Duryea plays a private eye in Singapore (Mike Callahan, lifted from a TV series he was in at the time) who longs to regain the love of Frenessey (wasn’t that a hit rhumba tune?) played by Marion Carr. She is married to an old friend, Julian, who has gotten in over his head with some serious Cold War operatives who have kidnapped a nuclear scientist. If Mike can once again pull his old pal out of harm’s way, she says she’ll leave him and make a new life with Mike, but she doesn’t want to desert him. Mike manages to free the nuke-man, but not before he has to confront his old friend while holding two live grenades: they go off, and Julian is dog meat.
Commenters tend to relate this flick to Kiss Me Deadly, Aldrich’s fabulous end-of-the-world/end-of-noir film because of the nuke connection, but I was reminded of The Third Man. A down at heel hero, pining for a woman who simply tolerates him, or strings him along, while carrying a torch for a real louse – that’s the dynamic here. There’s even a sewer connection: at one point Mike escapes his pursuers by lifting a grate and descending into the drains, but not too much is made of it.
I love Duryea, but in this flick he sometimes seems to be playing a guy playing a guy in a film noir. I believe that Aldrich even intimated that the film was intended as something of a parody, but if so, it’s just too unexciting to work. There is a nice bit where the big operator, played by Gene Lockhart, confronts the English blimps and lays out his terms. He’s a good villain, and the framing of the scene from the ceiling vantage point is nice.
The name of the villain is Alexis Pederas, emphasis on the second syllable, but doesn’t it read a bit like pederast? There is a thread of sexual ambiguity and decadence running through the film, including this brief bit of Marion Carr/Frenessey doing a nightclub number that brings to mind Cabaret and Victor Victoria.
Marion Carr is the most interesting figure in the movie, acting in a way that one commenter properly noted as “mannered.” I have seen her in only one other film, Kiss Me Deadly, where she spoke in the same odd manner, as if she was about to lose all her breath.
The ending when Mike has to tell Frenessey that her hubby is dead, killed by his grenades, is the best part of the film, and unlike anything I’ve seen in any other film noir. She is enraged, and accuses Mike of murder, although it was purely self-defense. She reveals her sordid past after her break up with Mike: alone, poor, and vulnerable, she turned to prostitution. Julian rescued her. He didn’t care about her sins, her immorality, he loved her as she was. (Of course, that left him quite free to carry on with his own love affairs.) She is loyal to Julian for that, and despises Mike for loving not her, but his image of her as a pure, lovely, young girl. Mike is devastated, and returns to his old haunts in the decrepit lanes of Singapore.
Ah, but there’s more, or there was to be more. The original script had Frenessey as lesbian, with a purely platonic relationship with her husband Julian. (So that Victor/Victoria get up makes more sense!) Mike couldn’t deal with that, but then, what’s he supposed to do? It puts a spanner in the works for his plans to run away and get married to her. At any rate, the censors wouldn’t stand for it, and that part of the plot was revised. I actually think it works better as it is: less “shocking” and transgressive, but a body blow to the usual male romantic narrative trains.
Journey to Perplexity 