Intrigue

“It’s worse than the old days of Prohibition. Not everybody drank, but everybody eats.” Hyperinflation was rampant in many countries immediately following WWII in part due to the black markets in which criminals bought up inventories and smuggled essential goods, especially food and medicine, to sell them at massive profit, which dramatically increased prices for the common folks. Such is the environment in postwar China where the recently court-martialed (under false pretenses) U.S. Army pilot Brad Dunham (George Raft) is supporting himself in Edwin L. Marin’s Intrigue by transporting smuggled goods from a hotel room where his pal and fellow veteran has just hanged himself. When Dunham confronts the head of the smuggling ring, the wicked and gorgeous Tamara Baranoff (June Havoc), to demand recompense for stolen inventory, she ends up making him a 50/50 partner, which pulls him deeper into the criminal underworld just as another American pal, journalist Marc Andrews (Tom Tully), shows up to file stories about the black market scourge with his newspaper (“He’s committing suicide with a typewriter”). Helena Carter plays Linda Arnold, a social worker at a local orphanage and the symbol of good to contradict Tamara’s symbolic evil, and the distinctive Marvin Miller plays smuggler Ramon Perez, who recently joined a rival gang and harbors no goodwill toward Dunham and company. Marin, who made four films starring Raft, does a nice job creating an exotic noir atmosphere, using thick blankets of fog and piercing lights in crowded, frenetic streets, even interior scenes often rumbling with the chaos outside. The dialogue, especially among the villains, could use some polish in spots, and the film veers into sentimentality a few times, but Intrigue is a perfectly capable noir that deserves greater appreciation.