Calcutta (1947)

Director:

John Farrow

Writer:

Seton I. Miller (writer)

Release Date:

29 August 1947 (Finland)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir

Tagline:

Adventure In The Far East ! Battling Buddies Gunning For Trouble !

Plot:

Neale and Pedro fly cargo between Chungking and Calcutta. When their buddy Bill is murdered they investigate...

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Murder | Pilot

Cast

Alan Ladd	...	Neale Gordon
Gail Russell	...	Virginia Moore
William Bendix	...	Pedro Blake
June Duprez	...	Marina Tanev
Lowell Gilmore	...	Eric Lasser
Edith King	...	Mrs. Smith
Paul Singh	...	Mul Raj Malik
Gavin Muir	...	Inspector Kendricks
John Whitney	...	Bill Cunningham
Benson Fong	...	Young Chinese Clerk

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #11115, Adult Audience)

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Murder In Old Calcutta

The team of Alan Ladd and William Bendix, as good friends off the screen as is shown on the screen in Calcutta, is the only real reason to watch this potboiler of an adventure story. The version I saw had several minutes cut out of it that were crucial to the plot.

Ladd and Bendix play a pair of pilots ferrying cargo and passengers from Chungking to Calcutta and back over the 'Hump' which is what the pilots in wartime called the Himalayas. The native people there more picturesquely called the mountain range, 'the roof of the world'. It was a dangerous run and these guys decided to keep doing it and make some money after World War II. You can see the flag of Nationalist Kuomintang China on their flight jackets.

Anyway a third buddy of there's John Whitney greets them in Calcutta after a dangerous run in which cargo had to be dumped and announces he's getting married. Ladd who has a loose relationship with June Duprez, and Bendix both don't think terribly much of the idea, but congratulate him anyway.

The next day Whitney is strangled in the streets of Calcutta and Ladd and Bendix like in The Blue Dahlia the previous year are on the trail of the culprit. The first stop is Whitney's fiancé, pretty Gail Russell, who knows a lot more than she's telling. Let's just say that a whole lot of pilots are being made out to be saps.

Tremendous events were going in both India and China at the time that Paramount was making Calcutta on their sound-stage yet from the story you would never know it. No hint at all is made about the Communist insurgency in China and in India you would think the British Raj was going to last another hundred years. Not one word about it in this potboiler of a plot which the Films of Alan Ladd says resembles Terry And The Pirates.

Probably Calcutta would have been a lot better had we seen more of Bendix in the film. That's always good for any picture. However he gets to try and earn a living for the two of them while Ladd stays in Calcutta to solve the mystery. However it's Bendix who hears something from merchant Paul Singh that he tells Ladd about that starts the whole thing to unravel. Later on Bendix runs some interference with the British police that allows Ladd to stay free and solve the case.

Calcutta is so typical of the potboiler films Ladd did and carried on the strength of his personality. It hasn't much else to recommend it.