First off, let me admit that I jumped the gun getting to Huston’s war documentaries before covering 1942’s Across the Pacific. But I’m kind of glad I did, because it provides a nice break between Let There Be Light and Treasure of the Sierra Madre—two very intense films.
Pacific is much lighter and a lot of fun. It reunites three stars from The Maltese Falcon—Bogie, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet—all playing the roles we love them in. Bogie is Rick Leland, an undercover Army agent trailing Japanese sympathizer Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet), who’s intent on bombing the Panama Canal. Aboard the Genoa Maru, bound from Halifax to Panama. Along the way, they encounter a number of mysterious figures, chief among them the all-to-proud-to-be-an-American Joe Totsuiko (brilliantly played by Victor Sen Yung), a second-generation Japanese man who makes a point of showing up when he’s not wanted and talking at you like you’re old friends when he’s met you only five minutes prior.
First-time viewers will notice a lot of similarities between Pacific and Casablanca, from the exotic locations, international intrigue, and Bogart’s performance, right down to his iconic trenchcoat and fedora and even his name. But Pacific actually came out two months before Casablanca. Casablanca‘s the better film, yeah, but the spirit of high adventure is just as good–actually, better.
Huston doesn’t say much about the picture in his autobiography other than he was called away for Army duty right near the end of it, so director Vincent Sherman was called in to finish it. I won’t go into many details, but at the end of it, Bogie’s trapped in an impossible situation, and it was left to Sherman to get him out of it. His solution was haphazard, and Huston said he felt that the picture “lacked credibility” after that point, but that’s all of a scant five minutes, and the action is nevertheless fun.
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