Reeling Backward: "Tokyo Joe" (1949)

I'm beginning to realize how much Hollywood reused story lines that had proved successful. "Casablanca" was a big hit, so that basic set-up -- Humphrey Bogart as a man of dubious loyalties in an exotic land, centered around a saloon, involved with nefarious dealings and a notorious woman -- was recycled several times. "To Have and Have Not" was an example previously covered in this space, and now I've stumbled across another: "Tokyo Joe."

This 1949 film with a B-movie feel is not widely remembered, and perhaps the reason is that it so closely resembles "Casablanca." The big difference is that instead of being an expat firmly rooted in his adopted homeland, Bogie plays a guy returning after a long absence. In other words, she doesn't walk into his gin joint, he walks into hers.

I should note that "Tokyo Joe" was not the movie I was expecting to see. I'd ordered it up in my Netflix queue along with a bunch of other World War II flicks -- those following the Reeling Backward column may have noticed the trend -- and I thought "Joe" was about an American pilot during the war. Joe Barrett was a pilot during the war, but the film is set in roughly the same year it came out, and Joe has long retired from military life.

He comes back to Tokyo to check on the status of the bar named after him, but not until being hassled by the American military. He's given only a 60-day visitor's pass. Joe arrives back at the bar to find it miraculously untouched by the many bombing raids, but not doing much business in the postwar funk that seems to grip the entire land. His friend Ito (Teru Shimada) is running the place, just getting by but better than most in Japan these days.

After refreshing their judo skills on each other -- in a rather painful-looking scene -- Joe and Ito have a discussion about the relationship between Japanese and Americans these days. Most Japanese feel guilty about having attacked Pearl Harbor, and shame at having been defeated by another power when their leaders told them they were invincible. The fact that the Americans have generally treated the Japanese well only feeds their shame.

Joe is astonished to learn that his wife Trina (Florence Marly), whom he thought dead, is still alive. He rushes over to her house, but finds her married to a British diplomat, Martin Landis (Alexander Knox). Joe abandoned her right before the war, and she divorced him in the interim. There's an interesting scene where the two men confront each other, and Joe tells Landis right out that he plans to win Trina back.

The romance between Joe and Trina is singularly unconvincing. Marly plays a Russian, with a not-terribly-good accent that sounds like a vaguely European lilt ... perhaps even, Swedish?

She has a blonde icy look and an impossibly tiny waist that made me ill every time I looked at it. Her confession to Landis that Joe holds a strange sexual power over her -- she doesn't use those exact words, but her description of wilting at the mere sight of him is enough -- is not borne out in her scenes with Joe, which are oddly flat.

In order to stay in Japan, Joe starts an air freight company with Japanese crime boss Baron Kimura, played by the great Sessue Hayakawa, as his secret partner. As near as Joe can figure out they're only hauling frozen bullfrogs, but it's not long before something more sinister turns up.

Joe later finds out he has a daughter with Trina, and Bogart's scenes with the girl are genuinely touching and a bit funny. Here's this hard-boiled guy -- Joe was prepared to resort to blackmail to force Trina back to him -- totally melting at a 7-year-old pixie.

The ending of "Tokyo Joe" is notable for its ambivalence. Joe is forced to choose between obeying the American military or Kimura, and appears to capitulate to Kimura, who is holding is daughter hostage. Things work out so that Joe saves the day, but is shot by Kimura and near death. As he's toted away on a stretcher, it's entirely uncertain if Joe will live, and if he does if Trina will choose him or Landis, and if the girl will ever find out her father's identity.

In an era when Hollywood loved cut-and-dry endings, "Tokyo Joe" is notable for the way Humphrey Bogart never steps fully into the light, or out of it.

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Three Came Back" (1950)

How surprised I was to find a World War II POW drama told from a woman's perspective, and almost 50 years prior to "Paradise Road," a high-profile -- and somewhat disappointing -- film from 1996 starring Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett and Glenn Close.

"Three Came Home" stars Claudette Colbert, one of the biggest stars of the 1930s and '40s, though her popularity was starting to wane by 1950. The movie also stars Sessue Hayakawa as the Japanese camp commander, a role very similar to the one he would play seven years later in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

His Col. Suga is much more sympathetic than Saito, the colonel from "Bridge." Suga is a stern but fair hand, even inviting Agnes Newton Keith (Colbert) into his office to share tea. Keith was a real-life American author, married to a Brit, living in North Borneo when the Japanese invaded, and Col. Suga asks for an autographed copy of one of her books.

The depiction of the Japanese in the film is often harsh, but somewhat nuanced considering the era. At least there are no Japanese wearing Coke-bottle glasses and speaking English in a racist ching-chong patter. But many of the guards are shown to be brutal bullies who beat the women purely for the enjoyment of it. In one scene, a guard demands a woman stick out her tongue, and when she does he punches her under the chin, causing her to injure herself.

Since the film is based on Keith's autobiographical book about her experiences as a prisoner of war, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of these events.

Colbert gives a layered performance as a brave woman who spent most of her captivity in fear. Her husband (Patric Knowles) and the other men are kept in a different camp, while she must look after their 4-year-old son, George. Interestingly, the boy is played by a single child actor, Mark Keuning, despite the fact that the story spans several years. I guess director Jean Negulesco didn't want to confuse the audience by suddenly having another kid show up.

Negulesco had a rough start to his career. He was fired off his first film, "Singapore Women," though he still received a screen credit. His next movie was "The Maltese Falcon," which he filmed for two months before being replaced by John Huston. He eventually made a name for himself, working regularly for the next 20 years, including an Oscar nomination for "Johnny Belinda."

There's one great scene that will linger with me. The women are about to be sent to a distant camp, and are allowed a few minutes to see their husbands before leaving. But they line them up across from a small gully, so they can only reach out far enough to clasp hands. It's quite an image, that long row of almost-embraces.

Another harrowing sequence (earlier on) has Agnes sneaking out of camp for a brief tryst with her husband under a tall palm tree. I think the scene where she sneaks through the brush on her belly while a Japanese soldier stalks her inspired Steven Spielberg for a similar moment in "Empire of the Sun."

The film's most controversial section is easy to name. Agnes is attacked one night by Japanese soldier intending rape, though she fights him off. She makes the her "bravest mistake" by telling the colonel about it, who is most disturbed at the accusation. Since Agnes can't identify her assailant, there's nothing to be gained except riling up the soldiers against her.

While Suga is away, the brutish lieutenant has her beaten to get her to sign a confession that she made up the whole story. Knowing that this would substantiate a case for false accusation, and effectively mean signing her own death warrant, Agnes refuses and nearly has her arm broken and her ribs kicked in. Worse yet, the lieutenant warns her not to tell the other prisoners about her treatment, lest even worse punishment follow.

I can only imagine how these scenes must have played in America in 1950, when painful memories of Japanese war crimes were still fresh. The scenes are still hard to watch even 60 years later.

3 stars out of four