Across the Pacific (1942)

Director:

John Huston

Writers:

Richard Macaulay (screenplay)
Robert Carson (serial)

Release Date:

5 September 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Romance | War

Plot:

Rick Leland makes no secret of the fact he has no loyalty to his home country after he is court-marshaled...

Plot Keywords:

Japanese | Panama | Panama Canal | Passenger | Plan Gone Wrong

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Rick Leland
Mary Astor	...	Alberta Marlow
Sydney Greenstreet	...	Dr. Lorenz
Charles Halton	...	A.V. Smith
Victor Sen Yung	...	Joe Totsuiko (as Sen Young)
Roland Got	...	Sugi
Lee Tung Foo	...	Sam Wing On
Frank Wilcox	...	Captain Morrison
Paul Stanton	...	Colonel Hart
Lester Matthews	...	Canadian Major
John Hamilton	...	Court-Martial President
Tom Stevenson	...	Unidentified Man
Roland Drew	...	Captain Harkness
Monte Blue	...	Dan Morton
Chester Gan	...	Captain Higoto

Also Known As:

Aloha Means Goodbye (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Canada:G (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (PCA #8248)

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

The last-minute screenplay change from Pearl Harbor to the Panama Canal was not implausible. Until the mid 1930s US military exercises concentrated on defending the Panama Canal from air, amphibious & small craft attack and were extensively covered by the press.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The background for the opening titles is a map of the Panama Canal. The orientation of the map and the compass is correct, but the labeling of the map is incorrect. In fact, the Atlantic end of the canal and the city of Colon are at the upper left (Northwest), and the Pacific end of the canal and Panama City are at the lower right (Southeast). The map is correctly labeled behind the closing credits.

Quotes:

Rick Leland: Hey, are you getting sick?
Alberta Marlow: I don't know. How do girls usually act when you kiss them?
Rick Leland: Well, they don't turn green.
Alberta Marlow: Then I'm sick. Get me out of here.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Play It Again, Sam (1972)

Maltese Albatross

This film is okay -- watchable and even interesting -- but one can't help comparing it to "The Maltese Falcon" which appeared the previous year. Same principle actors -- Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet -- no Peter Lorre fondling the handle of his cane, alas, and no gunsel -- and, for the most part, the same Director, John Huston. Huston was called up for Signal Corps duty halfway through filming and as a gag shot the scenes up to the point at which Bogart was strapped helplessly into a chair and sorrounded by armed guards, a situation seemingly without the possibility of escape. Then Huston cheerfully said goodbye and walked off the set, leaving his replacement, Vincent Sherman, to try to figure out how to get Bogart free. It may be unfair to compare "Across the Pacific" to a lucky shot like "The Maltese Falcon," but this film invites the comparison. Not just the same performers but similar lines -- "You're good, Angel, very, very good." But in Falcon the actors fit their fictional characters like enzymes accomodating themselves to a substrate. Here they are just actors playing familiar roles: the obese villain, the officer who's dishonerable discharge is faked so he can go undercover (Gary Cooper could have done as well, and in fact DID in a later movie), the innocent woman made to look bad because the enemy has imprisoned her dissolute father. The Japanese are all plain-vanilla bad guys, even the familiar young one who makes amusing wiscracks in American slang. And all the Japanese have real names like Tong, Chan, Loo, Fong, and Ahn. (To be fair, the last one is Korean, not Chinese.) If the characters are not nearly as much fun to watch as in "The Maltese Falcon," the plot is no more than a simple war-time mystery involving secret information that the Japanese want to use to start the war by torpedoing the locks of the Panama Canal. Actually, the Japanese did develop such plans later in the war. They intended to deliver a handful of torpedo planes to the vicinity of the Canal in huge submarines, which were available. The planes were not, and the plans folded when the war ended. In the movie, the characters move from New York to Canada, then board a Japanese steamer, back to New York, then to Panama, where they disembark. They travel from the Atlantic side of the canal to the Pacific -- but they never make it across the Pacific.