NR | 1h 37m | Adventure, Drama, Romance | 1942
Released in 1942, John Huston’s wartime adventure has a soldier-of-fortune flavor. It’s full of spies, military secrets, foreign ports, and people who aren’t always what they claim to be.
That gives the movie a personality of its own. Warner Bros. put real studio money behind the production. The film moves with the colorful, slightly preposterous logic of a 10-cent adventure serial, where a drink in a lounge can lead to espionage, and nearly every new passenger seems to have an angle.
Its primary cast was pretty heavy: Humphrey Bogart already had the face and demeanor for this; Sydney Greenstreet could make ordering lunch sound like an international conspiracy; and Mary Astor gives Bogart plenty to work with, keeping their scenes flirtatious while leaving him unsure what to make of her.
The movie also belongs to a very particular slice of American history. Its source, Robert Garson’s “Saturday Evening Post” serial “Aloha Means Goodbye,” originally involved a Japanese plot against Pearl Harbor.
Then, Pearl Harbor was actually attacked while the film was being prepared, and the target was rewritten as the Panama Canal. Warner Bros. kept the title “Across the Pacific.” The finished picture carried around a name from an earlier version of itself like an old shipping label nobody bothered to scrape off.
Even the production got caught up in the war. Director Huston was called into military service before filming was finished. He left Vincent Sherman to complete the picture. That fact says quite a bit about the Hollywood of that era. Wartime patriotism was right there on the screen.
Plenty of the people making those pictures were also putting their careers aside and going into uniform themselves. Huston would soon be filming actual American servicemen as part of the Army Signal Corps.
A Freighter Full of Questions
When this movie starts, much of the world is at war. Rick Leland (Bogart) gets tossed out of the U.S. Army after a court-martial finds him guilty of “appropriating” regimental funds, and the timing is pretty bad.
When he heads to Canada with the hope that his years in the military might get him another uniform, the Canadians take one look at his record and send him packing. China becomes his next possibility, so he books passage from Nova Scotia aboard a Japanese freighter, the Genoa Maru. The journey takes him to Yokohama by way of New York, the Panama Canal, and Honolulu. As far as anyone aboard knows, Rick’s military experience is now for sale.
Alberta Marlow (Astor), a Canadian traveling to Panama, catches Rick’s eye almost immediately, although her seasickness proves an inconvenient opening act for any sort of shipboard hanky-panky.
Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet), a sociologist living in the Philippines who has an enthusiastic admiration for Japan, finds Rick interesting for another reason. Rick spent years in an artillery unit around the Panama Canal, and Lorenz has a lot of questions about it. Joe Totsuiko (Victor Sen Yung) joins the voyage in New York and also takes an interest in Rick.
At this point, Rick is attracting a lot of attention for a guy supposedly just trying to get to China; some of it turns out to be of a decidedly bad variety.
A Spy Yarn With Teeth
The best scenes are simply Bogart, Astor, and Greenstreet feeling each other out. Astor keeps Alberta playful enough that Rick’s interest in her never turns into gratuitous mushiness. Greenstreet approaches conversations like a man who has all afternoon to glean something useful from whomever he’s talking to. His Dr. Lorenz is almost absurdly polite, which makes the character even funnier as his curiosity about Rick becomes harder and harder to dismiss.
The three had obviously developed a good rhythm together after filming “The Maltese Falcon,” and Huston wisely gives them ample room to play off each other.
This studio-bound voyage has more physical movement than you might expect. Huston had the set of the Genoa Maru deck rigged so it could rock beneath the actors, and he used slight camera movement during some cabin scenes to keep the same sensation going on below deck as well. It’s an old-school practical trick that keeps the ship from looking like everybody is simply standing around on a Warner Bros. stage.
If there were any weak spot I’d point out, it’d be that Rick’s real situation might have been kept under wraps a bit longer. His murky background, the possibility that his military knowledge is genuinely for sale, and the amount of attention he’s getting make that uncertainty fun while it lasts, as things get rougher.
“Across the Pacific” might be in the shadow of the bigger Bogart films, but it deserves more recognition than being treated like a footnote between classics. It’s humorous and well-paced, as well as being full of the kind of colorful studio-era silliness that makes old adventure pictures easy to enjoy.
Bogart, Astor, and Greenstreet are all in top form, and once this movie gets rolling, it becomes a splendid viewing experience.
“Across the Pacific” is available on Apple TV, Amazon, and YouTube.
‘Across the Pacific’
Director: John Huston, Vincent Sherman
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet
Not Rated
Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 5, 1942
Rated: 4 stars out of 5
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