Teutonic expatriates Kurt Neumann (director), Karl Struss (cinematographer), Hans Dreier (art director) combine skills in this very loose remake of the 1933 Charles Laughton/Carole Lombard WHITE WOMAN with Anna May Wong cast as Kim Ling, determined to find a way to cleanse her father's discredited name, and J. Carroll Naish is Gregory Prin, in this version a part-Asian overlord of a jungle labor settlement to which visitors are given only one-way passage. Created as unabashed melodrama, the work begins with a first meeting of Prin and Kim Ling where she is performing as "Lily" at a Singapore night club, and when she notices that Prin wears a medallion of her family crest, she accepts his invitation to accompany him to his plantation as guest, where she is introduced to sundry felonious outcasts, one of whom, however, is Chinese "Secret Service" agent Chang Tai, played by Anthony Quinn. Kim Ling discovers among her host's effects the proof that she requires to restore her father's honour, whereupon she and Chang Tai endeavour to bring about Prin's downfall, but the canny villain's informants keep him knowledgeable of this activity, as the rapidly paced affair moves to its highly charged conclusion, at times bereft of logic but never dull. In spite of moderate cutting by the studio, Paramount, ISLAND pleases on many accounts, notably the efficient direction and utilization of some clever script business, along with artistic cinematography and atmospheric sets and scoring, but the playing is sterling as well, with Naish capturing acting laurels with his nuanced reading of the inconsistent Prin, and there are outstanding turns from Eric Blore and Broderick Crawford, Wong playing Wong and singing nicely; efficient editing by Ellsworth Hoagland benefits this crisply done motion picture.
Review of Island of Lost Men
