Mandalay (Michael Curtiz, 1934)

Kay Francis, Warner Oland, and Ricardo Cortez in Mandalay

 Cast: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Warner Oland, Lyle Talbot, Ruth Donnelly, Lucien Littlefield, Reginald Owen, Etienne Giardot, David Torrence, Rafaela Ottiano, Halliwell Hobbes, Bodil Rosing, Herman Bing. Screenplay: Paul Hervey Fox, Austin Parker, Charles King. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Art direction: Anton Grot. Film editing: Thomas Pratt. Music: Heinz Roemheld.

You get what you might expect from a movie titled Mandalay: Orientalist hooey, with lots of gun-running and opium dealing in sleazy night clubs, with expat Europeans and Americans fleecing tourists with the aide of sinister Eurasians. (There was no other kind of Eurasian in Hollywood movies of the '30s; here they're played by Warner Oland, who made a career of the type before going straight into yellowface as Charlie Chan, and Rafaela Ottiano, who filled the bill whenever Gale Sondergaard was unavailable.) Kay Francis does what she can with a role that doesn't make a lot of sense: She's the Russian-born Tanya Borodoff, who has somehow fallen in love with Tony Evans (Ricardo Cortez), a gun-runner and all-around heel. When he dumps her, she becomes Spot White (no, I don't get the name either), the madam of the sleazy night club in Rangoon run by Nick (Oland). She doesn't want to fall that far from grace, but needs must. When she's threatened with deportation to Russia by the police commissioner (Reginald Owen), she blackmails him by reminding him that they once had a night together when he was drunk, and that she has her garter adorned with his medals to prove it. He gives her the money she needs to leave Rangoon and head for the "cool green hills" near Mandalay. Now calling herself Marjorie Lang, she boards a paddle-wheel steamer upriver, on which she meets an alcoholic doctor (Lyle Talbot) who intends to atone for accidentally killing a patient by working with black fever patients in the jungles. They hit it off and she helps him sober up, but, wouldn't you know it, Tony Evans resurfaces on the very steamer. This sounds like a lot more fun than it is, although Michael Curtiz's professionalism and Tony Gaudio's cinematography gives it some occasional finesse. Francis slinks about nicely -- a woman passenger tells her, "You certainly can wear clothes" -- but she doesn't have the spark she fires in her best roles, perhaps because Cortez and Talbot are such dull leading men. The ending is the sort of thing that would have the heads of the Production Code enforcers exploding, but even that isn't enough for me to recommend sitting through the rest of the movie.