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A seaman's education, "it keeps getting screwier all the time." The patsy with the brogue (Orson Welles) and the dame in the coach (Rita Hayworth), "a poor sailor with the princess of Central Park" begin the baleful noir jumble. She's married to "the world's greatest criminal lawyer" (Everett Sloane), he's hired on their luxury yacht, New York to Frisco via the Caribbean. The vessel is named "Circe," aboard are the twitchy business partner (Glenn Anders) and the divorce detective disguised as steward (Ted de Corsia). "A bright, guilty world," its end alarms the partner, who has a scheme in mind: "This is going to be murder, and it's going to be legal." Genre in full, magnificent upheaval, as befits "the notorious agitator" in command. Sunny and shadowy Acapulco, Citizen Kane's opulent picnic with alligators, a pervasive sense of bizarrerie best appreciated by Huston, and soon enough there's Beat the Devil. Madness after the bomb, a vertiginous close-up surrounded by seawater consumed by sunlight gives the churning consciousness. Folly of the "independent," incantation of a shark feeding frenzy, "I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black..." A radio jingle is a reminder of the jangling soundtrack Welles originally devised, it's followed by a melancholy torch song from his somnambulist star, "Please Don't Kiss Me." Rendezvous at the aquarium, undulating reflections and moray eels for the cropped and bleached Medusa. "I was taught to think about love in Chinese." A sustained, slow dolly-in finds its completion in Othello, the trial sequence is appropriately farcical, down to the woman in the audience sticking a piece of gum under her seat. The end of a relationship is the end of all things, the legendary funhouse climax has the camera lens amid its shattered mirrors. Nothing quite like it until the Godard of Pierrot le fou. Cinematography by Charles Lawton. With Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling, Lou Merrill, Carl Frank, Evelyn Ellis, Harry Shannon, and William Alland. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |