The Bribe

The 1949 film The Bribe has left comments that this film is slow in developing. In my opinion "what's the rush." Some films need to savor and watch the acting of a fine and notable cast. Charles Laughton (pie man) is great to watch him in many scenes. The other cast members as well do their parts convincingly. So for you film buffs out there sit back and enjoy the actors; we will not see the likes of again.

Film noir with Robert Taylor as the Federal Agent sent to Central America to investigate an airplane engine smuggling ring making plenty of money. As usual, Ava Gardner proves with her soft voice that she really couldn't act. Charles Laughton, as always, steals the film. In a marvelous supporting role, he plays the cunning, assistant to the usually ruthless Vincent Price. Laughton would be the equivalent of Snee of Peter Pan fame. Of course, Taylor falls for Gardner, even while he was sent in to investigate her and husband John Hodiak. Laughton informs Gardner who Taylor really is and things really deteriorate. Price gets what he deserves at film's end and with Hodiak conveniently killed off by Price, Taylor and embrace Gardner.

The sultry, steamy tropics rather than the rain soaked American city streets are interestingly substituted here as MGM decides to oneupmanship RKO at their own game of Film-Noir. It works, sort of, as the layers of a horizontal Hell are draped across most of the scenes and give it that eerie, sticky, web of entrapment expression. It is quite impressive high-contrast work that has a veneer of a fatalistic frame of impending encroachment. The second person narration is used, although first person would have worked better, because this has an awkward feel and distracts from the proceedings. The actors are all in top form and the ending is one of the most unusual displays of how to use black and white photography to aggrandize the presentation of brightly lit darkness.

Charles Laughton steals the show as usual, here as an old smuggler who has seen better days and suffers from sore feet, as he tries to manoeuvre a smuggling racket on an island off Central America, where he works with Vincent Price in a particularly disgusting character. Ava Gardner is there though and more splendid than ever in her amazing beauty, married to a drunkard that does not get any better but goes from bad to worse, as he is all mixed up in the racket. Enter Robert Taylor as a police sent from America to investigate and put an end to the smuggling, but he naturally gets involved with Ava Gardner. There are some striking scenes here of adventures at sea, while the finale offers you a wild fiesta with fireworks. There is everything here except Hemingway. The film is a bit overloaded and gets rather stagnant at times, but on the whole it's a great noir offering all the best of the genre.