Great black and white cinematography, excellent performances by some great character actors (Frank Morgan, AKA The Wizard of Oz, in particular)and the usually wooden Walter Pidgeon, and a promising beginning...until you see the whites of Hedy's eyes. And teeth. They kind of glow in the dark, into which she otherwise blends. The basic problem here, beyond the silliness of the sultry half-breed's speech patterns, epitomized above, is that the pay-off is too cheap coming after a rich set-up. I never read the novel on which CARGO is based, but it can't have been this uninvolving succession of merely unpleasant and unsavory events. Two things are suggested in the first scenes which could have made for some nice melodrama: that Tondelayo was more sinned against than sinning and had a certain moral sense, and that her present nemesis Pidgeon had once loved her. But these themes are dropped. Hedy was better at regal and ethereal than she was at vampy and sultry, anyway. Worth seeing once as a bit of legendary camp.
Review of White Cargo
