Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS:
CALCUTTA. Paramount Footage, 1946. Alan Ladd, Gail Russell, William Bendix, June Duprez. Directed by John Farrow.
Whereas positively not one of many higher recognized movies Alan Ladd ever starred in, Calcutta (1946) positively punches above its weight and is nicely price a glance. Much like the opposite unique location movies Ladd starred in all through the Nineteen Forties and Nineteen Fifties, Ladd portrays an adventurer who’s caught up in a whirlwind of crime and intrigue.
When Neale Gordon (Ladd), a industrial pilot in post-WW2 India, learns that his colleague and pal Invoice Cunningham was strangled in a Calcutta again alley, he turns into decided to unravel the case on his personal. Alongside for the trip is fellow pilot Pedro Blake (William Bendix).
The primary downside that Gordon encounters is that everybody he meets might probably be a suspect, together with the stunning Virginia Moore (Gail Russell), Cunningham’s fiancee. And that’s what makes Calcutta work. There are layers upon layers of intrigue, suspicious characters with ulterior motives, and women and men with doubtful intentions. The movie captures the temper of post-WW2 Asia very nicely. The Japanese have been defeated, however what comes subsequent?
In some methods, Calcutta jogged my memory of The Maltese Falcon (1941). No, it’s not practically pretty much as good a movie and Ladd isn’t Bogart. However there’s a similarity within the sense that, in some unspecified time in the future, the labyrinthian plot doesn’t matter as a lot because the characters and the environment. That’s positively true for this John Farrow-directed characteristic.
