Lábios que Escravizam

Federal agent Rigby (Robert Taylor) is sent to South America to stop a group smuggling aircraft engines, but falls for an alluring singer (Ava Gardner), who just happens to be the wife of one of the main suspects.

After reading not very positive reviews of this, I went into The Bribe with low expectations. It's got a great cast though: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price and John Hodiak.

I was pleasantly surprised. Being an MGM film, the set design, costumes and cinematography were top notch. The overwrought script and silly narration bog the film down a bit.

Taylor is his usual stolid self, Gardner was quite appealing (and beautiful as ever), while Price was good as the main baddie. However, the best actor is easily Charles Laughton. He gives an excellent performance as a henchman constantly complaining about his bad feet.

There's some good action sequences, especially the finale (directed by Vincente Minnelli!), involving a chase through a fireworks display. Good fun.

The Bribe (1949)

A loaded cast and crew make this an interesting draw (only the director Robert Leonard is little known to me, though he has two Best Director nominations). But really: Ava Gardner in a dramatic noir, with Robert Taylor the male lead (including a very noir voiceover to start). Throw in Charles Laughton and Vincent Price in smaller roles, and Joseph Ruttenberg doing cinematography and Miklos Rozsa the music. And it starts great, in a lonely room in Central America, rain pouring down the windows at night. And then the flashbacks begin. Maybe all this makes me a sucker. I expected a lot even with the clichés pouring on. But we have a formula noir here with all the elements exaggerated and none of them missed--the woman is even a nightclub singer, and wait for the drug in the drink later on. If you are willing to enjoy the form rather than the specifics of the movie, you have your film. It's almost great, and might someday be considered a classic simply because it makes so clear the elements of that form (the noir-alienated male, femme fatale, flashbacks, dramatic lighting, crime and treachery, short clipped phrases). It's so good at all this, it became the model for the comic send-up, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." But in a way this isn't fair, because the movie does work on its own, despite its lack of originality. It grows and gets better as you go, and the consistency of the production and the solidity of the plot make it worth seeing. Gardner is not great in the way some leading noir females are, but she has her sculptural poise and is still young as an actress. Taylor has sort of the same problem of not quite rising to the needs of the role, but he is fine. The fact that the two of them are not "amazing" is one of the holdbacks of the film--lots of noirs have formula plots but have such great acting it doesn't matter a bit. So Laughton, then, rising to the occasion, is really amazing. I've heard his performance called campy, but I don't think so, not for the genre. It's subtle, and if he's a character, he's not a caricature. Price, also good, has a someone limited role. Until the end. The final ten minutes is a film wonder. If you can't watch the whole thing for some reason, you can still be thrilled by the ending. The drama, the lighting, the photography, the pace and editing, it's all unparalleled.

After reading the mostly lukewarm reviews on IMDb, I decided to give this movie a try. I like Vincent Price and Charles Laughton, so I figured it would be worth a look.

Am I ever glad I did! I found perhaps the best movie of 1949! Once again I ask the question, "Why have I never heard of this movie?"

Perhaps because Ava Gardner went on to star in bigger films. But I certainly never saw her better (with the possible exception of the far later "Night of the Iguana").

I would not call this a film noir. There are several necessary film noir elements that are missing from "The Bribe," in my opinion. I'd call it more of a cop story.

However, that's a lot like saying "Casablanca" is a bar story. Or a war story. Similar to that film, the crime plot of "The Bribe" is just a backdrop for the love that transforms and overturns Taylor's, Gardner's and Hodiak's lives.

They say the course of true love never did run smooth. But Bogie and Bergman had a picnic in the park compared to what Taylor and Gardner must suffer. Both eventually fall so deeply in love that they're willing to destroy their lives for each other, yet neither trusts the other, and both are certain they have been betrayed. Used.

Ava Gardner is absolutely captivating in her second major role. Although Taylor does not manage to evoke the pathos Bogart does, Gardner absolutely sizzles! She is on screen during a large portion of the film, and every moment is riveting. Her acting has genuine depth as well, far outdoing Bergman's somewhat cold, rather simplistic naiveté. The girl is really torn up inside!

The other great delight in the film is Charles Laughton. He plays the sleaziest, lowest-down weasel that just about ever graced the pages of fiction, yet there were times that he reminded me more of Sophocles's blind seer Tiresias. And in spite of how unwashed and repulsive he is, in spite of how uncaringly he treats everyone he comes in contact with, in spite of his contemptible, almost laughable cowardice, he somehow still manages to come off as a genuinely lovable character.

The movie starts out kind of dumb. I thought with the voice-over narration that it was going to be another "Lady In The Lake," or maybe "Murder, My Sweet." But once the movie gets going, after half an hour or so, it just gets better and better. The plot becomes intense and intriguing. When I thought it was about to end, there were four more plot twists to go!

Don't let this one slip by you next time!

This is a fasinating example of film noir elements grafted on to an ordenary crime thriller, there is also romance between Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner, but thats a weaker part of the story. Taylor is to wooden in his role as a federal agent, Robert Mitchum would have been more suitable for this kind of film. But there are som nice noir caracters in the supporting roles, and director Robert Z Leonard contrasts effectivly the down at the heel feeling, with the surface glitter of the big town criminals who move trough it, giving the film a glossy look that at the same time is filled with an atmosphere of moral corruption. Ava Gardner is very beatiful in this early role, and she makes the most of it, Charles Laughton is very good as the sly henchman, oily and treacherous, he creats a fasinating character of a small role, a sort of unshaven Quasimodo, who sweats a lot and have trouble with sour feets. He is both human, weak and repulsive at the same time. Vincent Price is the suave villain, his playboy sportsman is both naive and evil but more icy than most of his roles of this kind, and he gives a fine performance. John Hodiak is a broken down ex-pilot, with alcoholic problems, a small role but well played. All these supporting players give the film a definite noir feeling, as well as Joseph Ruttenbergs moody graphics and Miklos Rozas score, also telling the story in flashback with Taylor narrating while recovering from beeing druged, gives the story a feeling of defeat and betrayal. The settings are dirty and seedy and the climate steamy, and the usual glossy high MGM production values, gives the footage a feeling of tropical heat. The story is a little slow moving, but the final shot-out between Taylor and villain Price during a carnival, is stylish and intersting as the element of death and joy are effectivley juxtaposed.

The reflective voice-over narration was a staple of film noir, but here it boasts the conceit of Robert Taylor addressing it to himself in the second person ("You..."). That curious choice informs the first half of The Bribe, told in flashback; midway, we catch up to the present and the droning ceases. Starting as a routine foreign-intrigue drama -- something about surplus airplane motors, but who cares -- set in an island off Central America called Carlota (or sometimes Carlotta; the film can't quite decide), the film boasts a top-notch cast: Taylor, Ava Gardner, John Hodiak, Vincent Price and Charles Laughton, who could be either the most actorly of hams or the hammiest of actors but here opts for the latter. Most of the way through it's not bad, but in its second half the tone darkens noticeably, when director Leonard decides to treat us to some stylistic flourishes. The over-the-top, Wellsian-Hitchcockian climax is (literally) pyrotechnic, and actually stands as one of the more memorable sound-and-light shows in the whole noir cycle.