{"id":5428,"date":"2012-08-17T15:52:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5428"},"modified":"2012-08-17T15:52:26","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T19:52:26","slug":"dvd-affair-in-trinidad-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5428","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Affair in Trinidad (1952)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>A<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Weak\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: Sony \/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: September 23, 2008<\/p>\n

Genre: Film Noir \/ Espionage<\/p>\n

Synopsis: The mysterious death of a dancer’s husband forces a widow and brother-in-mourning to solve the crime for lazy Trinidadian police.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Theatrical Trailer \/ Martini Movies Promo<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

After the success of Gilda<\/strong> (1946), Columbia clearly wanted to regroup its top talent (including raspberry-spitting Steven Geray) for another noir outing, and Affair in Trinidad<\/strong> is the patchwork production that burped onto screens 6 years later, but there\u2019s not a cent of magic in this awful example of Hollywood\u2019s habitual effort to repeat success without giving script and plotting any consideration.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly a noir where the brother and the widow of a suicide victim awkwardly attempt to find the truth of their sudden loss, Columbia re-engaged Gilda<\/strong>\u2019s able producer and exclusive Hayworth picture writer Virginia Van Upp (Cover Girl<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>]) to doodle a scenario that repeats all of the top Gilda<\/strong> moments, albeit transposed to sunny, breezy Trinidad. Visiting brother Steve (Glenn Ford) and wealthy snot Max Fabian (The Big Heat<\/a><\/strong>‘s [M] Alexander Scourby, sporting a perpetually smug pair of pursed lips) repeat Gilda<\/strong>\u2019s duo of jealous men, and Hayworth again plays a wounded dancer caught in a web of murder and industrial espionage, except unlike savvy Gilda, hip-swinger Chris Emery\u2019s an idiot; she\u2019s weak-willed and easily manipulated by men (including the shitty police) and never thinks for herself.<\/p>\n

Besides a flat script and dull characters, there\u2019s zero suspense in any of the plot twists, and Hayworth\u2019s two musical numbers feel like outtakes from Gilda<\/strong>. <\/strong>The first number\u2019s appropriately racy, whereas the second simply stops the film cold, and is in fact a blatant graft of \u201cPut the Blame on Mame\u201d where Gilda does a strip to instill raging jealousy in Ford\u2019s character. In Trinidad<\/strong>, Ford gives her a great big face smack before bolting out of the door.<\/p>\n

The industrial espionage is somewhat upped to an international incident, but it\u2019s a feeble Maguffin, and it doesn\u2019t matter who lives or dies because Vincent Sherman\u2019s direction is completely<\/em> workmanlike. There are no striking composition or camera movements, and action scenes are rather clumsily staged and worsened by badly timed edits. (Witness the tepid knife fight between Ford and a thug, or the badly choregraphed car accident of an errant scientist.) The few \u2018Trinidadian\u2019 characters are African-Americans who have no Caribbean accents, and the sets look like mothballed supplies from Gilda<\/strong>, including Fabian\u2019s mansion.<\/p>\n

Affair<\/strong>\u2019s a lazy creative outing that perhaps seemed designed by Columbia\u2019s Harry Cohn as punishment for a female star wanting real dramatic roles. Whereas Ford moved on to some solid genre efforts, Hayworth made a small quartet of films largely designed to play up her sex appeal before she was forced to go independent, taking a few roles requiring more clothing and need for extra talent \u2013 with notable results in Separate Tables <\/strong>(1958) and They Came to Cordura <\/strong>(1959).<\/p>\n

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Kaboom!<\/p><\/div>\n

Columbia\u2019s DVD is fine, but their Martini Movies branding is bizarre. Like the film as a whole, the cover art is a pastiche, and the contrived poster implies Glenn Ford\u2019s groin is about to explode in front of a waiting news photographer because of its unstable proximity to Hayworth\u2019s fission-ready ass.<\/p>\n

Best advice: Ford and Hayworth purists ought to take this film with a few chunks of salt. The actors\u2019 onscreen pairings include The Lady in Question<\/strong> (1940), Gilda<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1946), The Loves of Carmen<\/strong> (1948), Affair in Trinidad<\/strong> (1952), and The Money Trap<\/strong> (1965).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0A<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ A . Film: Weak\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: Sony \/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: September 23, 2008 Genre: Film Noir \/ Espionage Synopsis: The mysterious death of a dancer’s husband forces a widow and brother-in-mourning to solve the crime for lazy Trinidadian police. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[352,1448,1180],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1py","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5434,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5428\/revisions\/5434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}