‘Affair in Trinidad’ or — The Hayworth Comeback?
(No spoilers)
Trinidad and Tobago and a man is found dead. The signs point to suicide but the corpse’s wife, nightclub singer Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth), isn’t convinced. Neither is the corpse’s brother, Steve (Glenn Ford), who’s just arrived in Trinidad on his brother’s request. But why would his brother send for Steve only to then kill himself before his arrival? Steve knew his brother and sure, his brother was a depressive but he’d never do something like that. Steve doesn’t buy it.
And neither do the police of this British colony who inform Chris that they suspect her husband was murdered by the sophisticated and powerful Max Fabian who lives in a fancy house on the island. They know Fabian is involved in something highly treasonous but they don’t know what. What they do know is that Max holds a flame for Chris so they convince Chris to play along with Max and help them gather evidence against him.
But when Steve and Chris fall for each other this causes problems as Chris can’t reveal to Steve her mission and Steve has launched his own personal investigation into his brother’s death. But what’s really eating Steve up inside is seeing the woman he loves flirting with the man he assumes to be his brother’s killer. It’s enough to make a guy sick.
So Vincent Sherman’s ‘Affair in Trinidad’ (1952) is an obvious cash-grab to replicate the success between Hayworth and Ford in ‘Gilda’ (1946) and launch Hayworth’s comeback. And, apparently, it succeeded as it became a box office hit, if not a critical one. You can see why because this is no ‘Gilda’, no matter how hard it tries. It’s not a bad film by any means but its problems often trip it up.
Firstly, you can feel ‘Affair in Trinidad’ reaching for prestige and glamour which, ultimately, holds it back somewhat. It can’t quite pull off the glitz to dazzle and distract us from the silliness of the plot. Hayworth’s two musical numbers — ‘I’ve Been Kissed Before’ and ‘Trinidad Lady’ — are cool but feel so roughly shoehorned in that they didn’t even use a shoehorn to help the cramming in process, leaving us with bruised heels.
Plus the love story is pretty unremarkable. The performances are strong with Hayworth showing depth and range whilst Ford switches from his usual brooding to suddenly flashing that Alfred E. Neuman grin of his but it’s hard to get all worked up over.
And then, about thirty minutes in. something relatively interesting happens. Initially ‘Affair in Trinidad’ gives the impression of being one of those tedious, dated, patronising colonial affairs with no self-awareness or intelligence… and then Max Fabian’s guests arrive and the movie suddenly kicks into a higher gear and demonstrates that it’s got some potentially serious smarts underneath. We’re suddenly treated to barbed digs concerning world power, exploitation and sinister threats to the world and all discussed by a rather eccentric group of characters with a flair for colourful dialogue — “Even at the risk of dislocating your personality, try to remain calm” and “I am very easily dominated” being a couple of particularly nice ones.
Indeed, the bad guys are great and inject some much needed pep into it all as they trade quips and speculate on intimations of unspecified global doom. The only problem is just when the movie picks up it doesn’t quite know what to do with all this newfound energy meaning in just sort of dissipates rather than building to a focus or climax. Although ‘Affair in Trinidad’ doesn’t so much climax as simply and suddenly slam on the brakes, bringing the entire movie to a screeching halt and shoving us out the car.
If you decide to visit ‘Affair in Trinidad’ expecting something in the league of ‘Gilda’ you’ll be majorly disappointed as it can’t compete with Vidor’s film on any level. But taken as a well made, decent if unremarkable melodrama it just about gets away with it, with just enough flashes of brilliance keeping it mildly incandescent.
