Rio

A bleak and dark drama of a swindler who moves from the pinnacles of fortune in Paris down to misery in a chain gang in the swamps of a Brazilian penal colony, from where he escapes in desperate longing for his wife, whom he knows is in Rio as a celebrated night club singer - she already was in Paris, and she probably moved to Rio just to be closer to him, in case he would escape, but the film never tells this, although it should have informed the audience of the obvious. In Rio, though, she is courted by an alcoholic former piano tuner who turned engineer and failed with a great project, so he took to drinking. There are some very funny scenes with him. He falls desperately in love with her, but then Basil Rathbone succeeds in escaping and finds her again - too late, it seems, for everything. It is difficult to classify this semi-noir of great and exotic adventure, but it definitely is interesting, and they could have made much more of it. Basil Rathbone is excellent, as always, and so is Victor McLaglen, while Sigrid Gurie only makes you long for Marlene Dietrich, who would have made a part like this so much better.