I'll bet the novel was a corker, big and fat, because the movie that Republic made out of it is pretty complicated. The fundamentals are clear enough though. John Wayne is Master of the Red Witch in 1860 and, with the complicity of his first mate, Gig Young, runs her aground and sinks her along with her cargo of millions of dollars in gold. Young believes that Wayne does it for the money, but in fact, as we learn through a series of flashbacks, he's doing it chiefly because he hates the owner of the ship, the phenomenally wealthy Luther Adler.
The mutual hatred goes back seven years, to a time when Adler, dead heading it on one of his ships -- he owns many -- plucked Wayne out of the water and saved him from death by shark. At the next port, they both fall for Angelique Desaix, Gail Russel, and it's easy to see why. She's more of a blue-eyed, black-haired ghost than a young woman. She's strikingly attractive. Her pale beauty has a lunar sheen. And when she manages to raise her voice above a whisper it sounds like a high school girl's. She seems shy in front of the camera. She WAS shy. It's all very magnetic, enough to make any normal man sit her on his knee and whisper reassurances while he nibbled her ear.
Well, Russel falls for one of the two men. She has a choice between the young, vigorous, handsome, tall, plain-spoken Wayne, and the squat, greedy, insinuating, lizard-eyed Luther Adler. Guess which one she chooses? Not that it does her any good. Her tradition-bound French father arranges her marriage to Adler. Wayne stalks off. Russell is heart broken.
One thing leads to another. Adler is bound to a wheelchair by the disease that kills Russell. Pearls come and go. Ships blow up. And millions of dollars of gold that belong to Adler sit in the belly of the sunken Red Witch, whose location is known only to Wayne.
Wayne's performance is about at par. That is to say, he's John Wayne. That slow drawl, that slight grin, all seemed to define his range as an actor. He never changed much during his career and came eventually to believe in his own legend. (He was hesitant about admitting that he had lung cancer because the public Duke should not be laid low by a disease.) He seemed not to recognize it when he showed his considerable talent in character roles in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," for instance, or "True Grit." After "The Wake of the Red Witch," I don't think he ever allowed his screen character to approach villainy so closely.
In any case, this may be Luther Adler's film. He's the most talented actor in it and his role is the most complex. Adler's rage towards Wayne animates his days. It has joined his lust for pelf as his chief reason for living. It may have saved his life from the disease that crippled him. At one point, a meddlesome Dutch official tells Adler that his understanding is that bad blood exists between him and Wayne. Priceless, the way Adler rolls his eyes innocently, wonderingly, and replies, "Ohh, NOOOO." It's about the only comic moment in an otherwise dramatic film. And the plot itself doesn't add up to much. There's a lot of hooey about Wayne killing a giant octopus and being called "Son of Taratua", a white god, by "the natives." There's a Pearl Festival. There's a speech by Wayne about how a man can breathe free on a ship under sail. None of it makes me want to read the novel.
The mutual hatred goes back seven years, to a time when Adler, dead heading it on one of his ships -- he owns many -- plucked Wayne out of the water and saved him from death by shark. At the next port, they both fall for Angelique Desaix, Gail Russel, and it's easy to see why. She's more of a blue-eyed, black-haired ghost than a young woman. She's strikingly attractive. Her pale beauty has a lunar sheen. And when she manages to raise her voice above a whisper it sounds like a high school girl's. She seems shy in front of the camera. She WAS shy. It's all very magnetic, enough to make any normal man sit her on his knee and whisper reassurances while he nibbled her ear.
Well, Russel falls for one of the two men. She has a choice between the young, vigorous, handsome, tall, plain-spoken Wayne, and the squat, greedy, insinuating, lizard-eyed Luther Adler. Guess which one she chooses? Not that it does her any good. Her tradition-bound French father arranges her marriage to Adler. Wayne stalks off. Russell is heart broken.
One thing leads to another. Adler is bound to a wheelchair by the disease that kills Russell. Pearls come and go. Ships blow up. And millions of dollars of gold that belong to Adler sit in the belly of the sunken Red Witch, whose location is known only to Wayne.
Wayne's performance is about at par. That is to say, he's John Wayne. That slow drawl, that slight grin, all seemed to define his range as an actor. He never changed much during his career and came eventually to believe in his own legend. (He was hesitant about admitting that he had lung cancer because the public Duke should not be laid low by a disease.) He seemed not to recognize it when he showed his considerable talent in character roles in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," for instance, or "True Grit." After "The Wake of the Red Witch," I don't think he ever allowed his screen character to approach villainy so closely.
In any case, this may be Luther Adler's film. He's the most talented actor in it and his role is the most complex. Adler's rage towards Wayne animates his days. It has joined his lust for pelf as his chief reason for living. It may have saved his life from the disease that crippled him. At one point, a meddlesome Dutch official tells Adler that his understanding is that bad blood exists between him and Wayne. Priceless, the way Adler rolls his eyes innocently, wonderingly, and replies, "Ohh, NOOOO." It's about the only comic moment in an otherwise dramatic film. And the plot itself doesn't add up to much. There's a lot of hooey about Wayne killing a giant octopus and being called "Son of Taratua", a white god, by "the natives." There's a Pearl Festival. There's a speech by Wayne about how a man can breathe free on a ship under sail. None of it makes me want to read the novel.