This is one of my favourite films and is as great as people say. It's got a lot of plot, some I think lifted from other sources. The gold in the steam-engine - wasn't that a story by Kipling? (Notice how the runaway engine is mirrored by the runaway piano in the saloon where the posh people have taken refuge.) And the "fake" pearls are definitely Somerset Maugham - they turn up again in a film that's a compendium of his short stories. I love Jean Harlow, and she only betrays Gable because she thinks she's lost him. Surely she redeems herself and switches sides again. (And was her real-life husband murdered? His motiveless "suicide" is one of those Hollywood mysteries that have a hundred solutions.) Harlow died tragically young of untreated kidney disease - her mother was a Christian scientist. Or is that another legend?
Review of China Seas
