SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

boblipton Gable and Rosalind Russell play a couple of jewel thieves who meet in ..... well, guess where, and keep running into each other thereafter. It's a fairly formulaic film carried on the charms of the leads; director Clarence Brown can't overcome the MGM gloss to provide the screwball details that the first half of the film really needs, although Peter Lorre as a shady and unctuous tramp steamer captain is a lot of fun. I have the feeling Miss Russell replaced Myrna Loy at some stage in the production and the first couple of reels show damage. Clarence Brown directs the comedy bits for everyone but the two leads, a telling indictment of his opinion of their chop. Even worse, William H. Daniel's high-lit camerawork makes Miss Russell look a trifle jowly.

wes-connors Professional jewel thief Clark Gable (as Gerald Meldrick) has a perfect replica of the fabulously valuable necklace called "Star of Asia" made. He goes to Bombay, India posing as a Lloyd's of London detective. Keeping his British accent under wraps, Mr. Gable plans to steal the jeweled necklace, and leave the fake in its place. He meets phony baroness and socialite Rosalind Russell (as Anya Von Duren), another thief who wants the necklace. Learning "Duchess of Beltravers" Jessie Ralph has a fondness for alcohol, Ms. Russell maneuvers herself a seat at Ms. Ralph's table and gets the old woman drunk...After Ralph passes out, Gable and Russell vie for the necklace. They become mutually attracted. All goes well when director Clarence Brown guides it around the Bombay hotel, where we follow the real and fake necklaces. Next, the co-stars escape authorities on a boat. Peter Lorre appears, briefly, as a Chinese captain with a yen for money. Uneasily, the heist story becomes a war movie. The playful first half is forgotten. They should have showed more of the delightful Jessie Ralph, looking for her necklace, and finally accepting Gable and Russell as imaginary heirs and occasional drinking buddies.***** They Met in Bombay (6/27/41) Clarence Brown ~ Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell, Jessie Ralph, Peter Lorre

mark.waltz The first half is a jewel robbery caper a la "Trouble in Paradise". Posing as the Scotland Yard representative from Lloyds of London, the oh-so-British Clark Gable (!) shows up in Bombay hoping to steal the Star of India necklace worn by the eccentric Duchess of Beltravers. He doesn't realize he has company; Rosalind Russell, posing as a Baroness, has shown up with the same intention. It is obvious that one of them will end up with it, but who? Fate throws them together, and that's where the second half comes in, a tale of war in China where the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese are preparing to attack British troops. Gable and Russell find themselves thrust into this battle as the threat of being discovered for the jewel heist hangs over them.First half sophisticated comedy, second half patriotic cry for arms. It really changes the mood of the film which would have been fine had the change not been so jarring. The comedy of the first half is really entertaining with Gable and Russell an attractive romantic team. Throw in the marvelous Jessie Ralph as the Duchess and you've got a marvelous display of scene stealing. The Duchess, who "came to aristocracy via the stage door", is a salty lush who "carries my children like a lady and my liquor like a gentleman". Ralph, so marvelous as the society leader of Gable's 1936 smash "San Francisco", is a Marie Dressler/May Robson type dowager with her vinegary voice and acid delivery. But once the film departs Bombay, the comedy lessens, adventure increases (with an excellent chase sequence), until taken over by a well-filmed war sequence. In the scene where Russell gets her hands on the necklace off the passed-out duchess, she slithers out of the room, reminding me of the cat-like Gale Sondergaard in "The Letter".Peter Lorre appears briefly as the slimy, whiskered Chinese captain of the ship that picks up the escaped Gable and Russell. He must have been the Asian cousin of Lorre's equally sleazy character in Gable's 1940 adventure "Strange Cargo". MGM perennial Reginald Owen is also on hand as the British commander in China. There are moments of farce (the chase sequence gets a bit silly with the poor Indian man carrying two buckets on each end of a long stick), tension (Will Gable and Russell get off Lorre's ship before Scotland Yard catches them?) and romance (the initially antagonistic couple realizing their attraction towards each other) to hold onto one mood for a long period of time. But Clarence Brown, one of MGM's best directors, makes the film move fast enough so these quibbles do not lessen the entertainment value of the film as a whole.

weezeralfalfa It was great to see another little remembered Gable film made before he went off to war. When he was paired with Rosalind Russell in "China Seas", they met in Hong Hong and traveled by ship to Singapore. Here, they meet in Bombay and travel by ship to Hong Kong, under quite different circumstances, as fugitive jewel thieves. In general form, this film reminds me of the later "The Big Steal", a chase thriller-screwball romantic comedy combo in an exotic locale, involving a man and woman, unknown to each other, looking for the same thing. Toward the end, it turns into a forerunner of "The Great Imposter", with Gable successfully fooling the British Hong Kong garrison into believing he is a British officer, who happens to be passing through. This gets him into more hot water than he bargained for, as the Japanese invade Hong Kong(as they actually did less than a year later!). Peter Lorre doesn't fool anyone as the supposedly Chinese captain of the ship taking the thieves to Hong Kong. This is mostly Gable's film. Sometimes, I wondered if I was looking at a deglamourized Heddy Lamarr instead of Rosalind Russell. All in all, an entertaining, if silly, romp, with Gable still looking in peak form and seeming to enjoy himself.