Producer: Edwin H. Knopf. Copyright 25 November 1949 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Capitol: 22 February 1950. U.S. release: 6 January 1950. U.K. release: 16 January 1950. Australian release: 1 June 1950. 8,557 feet. 95 minutes. Alternate U.S. title: Alien Orders.
U.K. release title: EAST OF THE RISING SUN.
COMMENT: Disappointingly little action can be glimpsed in this over-talkative account of rubber smuggling in war-time Malaya. Not only is the screenplay irritatingly slow in getting under way, but Richard Thorpe's stolidly unimaginative, heavy-handed direction kills whatever promise the original yarn might have possessed. At times, would you believe, the script presents feeble echoes of Cacablanca, - for example in the sequence where George Folsey's camera caresses Cortesa singing "Those Little Things".
The marquee interest stimulated by the teaming of Tracy and Stewart also proves a fizzer. Indeed, all the acting rates as disappointingly routine. Richard Loo's charming manners come across as no substitute for Casablanca's Claude Rains ("I'm just a corrupt public official"), while Sydney Greenstreet renders his customary characterisation with a glumly dispirited air that effectively conveys his total dissatisfaction with the movie in general and Thorpe's impersonal handling in particular. Keen-eyed fans will have to stay wide awake to catch sight of Gilbert Roland who has one of the smallest and least consequential roles of his career. Likewise Lionel Barrymore, whose two scenes do him little credit.
To sum up, the picture falls resoundingly flat. Despite a tolerably large budget and a fair dollop of surface gloss, Malaya proves once again that even the strongest cast cannot survive a tepid script and dull direction.
COMMENT: Disappointingly little action can be glimpsed in this over-talkative account of rubber smuggling in war-time Malaya. Not only is the screenplay irritatingly slow in getting under way, but Richard Thorpe's stolidly unimaginative, heavy-handed direction kills whatever promise the original yarn might have possessed. At times, would you believe, the script presents feeble echoes of Cacablanca, - for example in the sequence where George Folsey's camera caresses Cortesa singing "Those Little Things".
The marquee interest stimulated by the teaming of Tracy and Stewart also proves a fizzer. Indeed, all the acting rates as disappointingly routine. Richard Loo's charming manners come across as no substitute for Casablanca's Claude Rains ("I'm just a corrupt public official"), while Sydney Greenstreet renders his customary characterisation with a glumly dispirited air that effectively conveys his total dissatisfaction with the movie in general and Thorpe's impersonal handling in particular. Keen-eyed fans will have to stay wide awake to catch sight of Gilbert Roland who has one of the smallest and least consequential roles of his career. Likewise Lionel Barrymore, whose two scenes do him little credit.
To sum up, the picture falls resoundingly flat. Despite a tolerably large budget and a fair dollop of surface gloss, Malaya proves once again that even the strongest cast cannot survive a tepid script and dull direction.