Another one in the Criterion Cary Grant Comedy Collection. I vaguely remember this being on telly (probably around Xmas) when I was a lad, and so it seemed like a good Xmas film for us. And it was! And it was actually better than I thought. The setting is Pacific Islands during World War II, and we first see Cary Grant (as Walter Eckland) putt-putting up to a dock in his boat while bad news about Japanese victories plays on the radio until he changes it to music. The message is that here is a man who wants to stay well out of things. He's only at the dock to steal some petrol from the British Navy, and would get away with it if he weren't recognized by Trevor Howard, who knows him from way back. (Grant is playing an American, as he reluctantly reveals later, he was a professor of History who grew disillusioned by his inattentive pupils - I hear ya, buddy.) Howard (Commander Frank Houghton) has a job that needs doing that he knows Walter would never dream of doing: going to live on a deserted island to act as a spotter of Japanese aircraft. But he also has the power to confiscate Walter's (newly acquired for a song, because the previous owner had to leave in a hurry) boat, so he persuades Walter to agree. Houghton's fussy assistant Lieutenant Stebbings rightly doubts Walter's sincerity, but Houghton is no fool: he accompanies Walter's boat to the island, unloads plenty of supplies for Walter (including crates of whiskey - the carrot alongside the confiscation-threat stick) and (just as Stebbings is worrying that Walter will disappear as soon as they leave) he steers his ship into the side of Walter's boat, knocking a huge hole in it, so that Walter has to tow it ashore using his dinghy.
What's worse, when he gets there he discovers that the whiskey is hidden, and Houghton will only tell him of the location of one bottle at a time for each CONFIRMED sighting.
All is going well (for Houghton, if not particularly for Walter), when another of Houghton's spotters reports that his island is surrounded by the Japanese and he requests evacuation. The trouble is that the only person anywhere near is Walter, and of course his only vessel is the dinghy. But Houghton persuades him to try, (a) by telling him the location of all the remaining whiskey, and (b) by assuring hm that the man who rescues him will fix his boat and replace him as his island's spotter. So off he goes in his tiny boat. When he gets to the island, though, all he finds is a freshly-dug grave and an empty signal hut. And, of course, that's where the movie really starts, because it's Leslie Caron's Mademoiselle Catherine Freneau who dug the grave, and she comes with 7 girls - 4 English, 2 French and 1 (particularly complaining) Australian, of various ages. In a plot that is very reminiscent of Operation Petticoat, they were stranded there when their pilot had to rescue someone else. And as the Japanese are getting closer, Walter has to carry them back to his island in his tiny and about to be very overloaded boat. Of course they get there, but only after a close call with two ships that may or may not be Japanese. And then Walter and Catherine star to butt heads over whether he has to share his hut (he loses quickly and decamps to his bigger, still waterlogged boat) and whether she has a right to hide his whiskey. Basically at this point you realize that Cary Grant is playing a Walter Matthau part. Which is interesting in-and-of itself - he's scruffy and unshaven, two things that you would never usually associate with the super-suave Grant. I've not really registered Leslie Caron before, although we own An American in Paris, for which Gene Kelly plucked her from a Paris ballet company. She's unusual-looking - rather elfin - but she makes a good match for Grant. Their romance isn't over-done, either. They do have a cute "teaching her to fish with her hands" scene,
but she's no Doris Day - she's a no-nonsense schoolteacher, and he's decidedly gruff. And there are scenes of real tension when the Japanese get close (at one point landing on the beach to find turtles for turtle soup, while two of the girls are roaming around unaware of the peril), and eventually invade, and the island has to be abandoned. So in that sense the film was rather refreshing in avoiding lapsing into treacle. But on the flipside, when Walter and Catherine do finally fall for each other, it happens so fast that literally the next scene is them calling Houghton to get a priest to marry them. The scene I remember from when I must have seen at least parts of this as a kid is when Catherine thinks she's been bitten by a water snake, and Walter is advised by an expert that Houghton finds that the snakes indigenous to that region are lethal, and the only thing to do is ply Catherine with "analgesic" until the poison takes her. Of course, after she makes a drunken fool of herself
(and gets him to reveal that he was a teacher too, having just accused her of being a schoolmarm), the girl who was with her discovers that the "snake" was just a root that looks like one.
Verdict: a pleasant diversion, with some genuinely exciting moments and great chemistry between Grant and Caron and Grant and the girls. Oh, and it's nice to see Trevor Howard, too.
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