Million Dollar Weekend

I have no idea why this is classified as a comedy on this site! There are no comedic elements to this film - it is in fact a quite dark, 'film noir'-ish drama, and a very good one.

Quiet middle-aged businessman Nicholas Lawrence is fed up with his life and decides to embezzle his firm of a million dollars and flee to Shanghai. However, it becomes his misfortune to find himself seated with a dodgy pair of passengers on the plane: a beautiful young widow, Cynthia Strong, taking a trip to Hawaii to get away from it all after the untimely death of her husband, and tooth-clenchingly irritating Alan Marker, who has trailed her in an attempt to blackmail her by threatening to frame her for the murder of her husband.

When Alan has to make a trip to the gents', Cynthia begs Nicholas to help her by pretending he's an old friend of hers whom they have just mutually recognised, in the hopes that Alan will take the hint and go away. However, he instead sticks himself to the both of them like glue for the entire stopover in Hawaii and makes life miserable, culminating in his stealing Nick's stolen million and hightailing it to San Francisco. Needless to say, Nick is not now able to continue on to his destination of Shanghai, but instead he and Cynthia go in pursuit of Alan.

This is a very absorbing, well-acted dark drama with a sympathetic hero, a lovely and mysterious leading lady, and a memorably obnoxious villain (Francis Lederer, who played Alan, was the founder of the American National Academy of Performing Arts and apparently was still teaching acting up to the end of his life - so he certainly knew how to play a truly obnoxious bad guy).

Very recommended film which should be better known - you can easily imagine Bogart and Bacall in the leading roles, and if that had been the case, I think this film would have been a well-known classic, but the actors who do star in this film carry off their parts very well.