This story, by W.Somerset Maugham, has been filmed many times in the
last seventy-odd years, but this is the first talkie. I cannot say that it is
the best of all possible adaptations; a tacked-on sub-plot (involving a
romance with an amorous quartermaster) helps the exposition but dilutes
the icy cynicism of the basic story, the missionary and his wife are
clumsy caricatures of hellfire and brimstone puritanism, while Joan
Crawford's "low-class" accent is more irritating than it is believable
-- one is relieved when she forgets to use it, and no less than Charlie Chaplin was known to have questioned the costuming choices, saying that "no whore would be caught dead looking like that".
Yet it shines.
The story is told only partially through the script, which seems less
wordy than most early talkies: many important points are made purely
visually, from the overflowing rainbarrel in the opening sequence to the
high-heeled shoe that signals Sadie's return to her prior way of life.
The camera moves: around tables, in and around groups of people, in
and out of doors with incredible smoothness. Crawford's face is also a
focus: from her initial "good-time gal" flirting with the sailors to the
incredible sequence where she (apparently) converts, she leers, pouts,
weeps, and more importantly, knows when to stop, in the three scenes she
appears without (much) makeup. (My mother asked me to look for freckles.)
When Rev. Davidson soothes her in her extremis by telling her in a
hypnotic voice (backed by native drums) that she is now "radiant,
beautiful, one of the daughters of the King" (a moment of sheer
unearthly poetry that verges on psychosis), we believe him -- and her.
We also believe Huston's face a moment later, as he prays alone,
grimaces unreadably, and suddenly resolves into a look of predatory lust
just before slipping into her room, the drums implacably beating in the
background.
Small excellences abound: the natives are portrayed sympathetically,
and for the time, fairly accurately-- I especially liked the use of
Polynesian music, which, along with the Sadie's hot jazz records,
emphasies the sensual nature of life in the tropics. The subject of her
profession is handled tastefully, but frankly and with humor: in
referring to a friend's marriage to a sister fille de joie, the
quartermaster remarks that they initally met "illegally" and goes on to
say that since they met seeing each other at their worst, they can
appreciate seeing each other at their best. A running counterpoint is
provided by Dr. MacPhail, a more-or-less neutral bystander, and Mr.
Horne, the genial (and generally supinely drunk) innkeeper, who fusses,
chortles, philosophizes, and gets most of the movie's best lines.
Perhaps the best of these occurs sometime after Sadie's conversion:
lolling indolently, he reads from a small book something that sounds
incredibly like Ecclesiaticus-- for a moment, we nearly believe that
Davidson has converted him, too. Then, finishing the passage, he
intones, "Thus spoke Zarathustra.... Good old Nietzsche!"
Sixty-five years later, watching the film on a postage-stamp-sized screen of Real Video, I nearly fell out of my chair.