Stars: Two and three quarter out of five stars (five for Joan's beauty)

I immensely enjoyed the pairing of dashing, adorable Ramon Novarro with a beauteous and sweet Joan Crawford in "Across to Singapore."  Their contemporary beauty and liveliness are the chief fun of this silent film, since the script is the stuff of yellow prose:  illogical, heavy-handed melodrama replete with a swashbuckling thrill or two.  Joel Shore (Novarro) and Priscilla Crowninshield (Crawford) are childhood playmates in seafaring New England who are now grown.  In the opening scene, the pair enact mutiny at sea, then fall giggling onto the sand, the fresh-faced and fair Priscilla in a very provocative dress.  The youngsters then go to meet Joel's brother Mark's ship, the Nathan Ross, which has returned from a two year journey.  Trouble ensues when it is clear that Mark (Ernest Torrence) is smitten with the fully-blossomed, coquettish Priscilla and a close-up of the girl’s eloquent, lovely face makes it understandable why he would be.  When Mr. Shore invites the returning sailors to his home for dinner, Priscilla finds herself the solo female (hey – it’s Joan!), all of the men eagerly offering her their arms for escort into the dining room.  The two brothers, Mark and Joel, horse around in believable fashion at the table and although Crawford is given little to do beyond giggling into her handkerchief, she makes her character wholly alive.  She is very young and beautiful in an extremely natural way – no iconic exaggerated lips or brows – just youthful freshness and prettiness, extraordinary eyes and a great smile.  She gives Mark those eyes in a moment by the staircase and this seals her doom, because unbeknownst to her (the first red flag in the script), the men observing them decide she is going to be betrothed to Mark – and cruelly don’t plan to let her in on it.

 

As Priscilla and Joel frolic impishly upstairs, actually sitting together on his bed (however innocently), downstairs Mark is asking Mr. Crowninshield for Priscilla’s hand in marriage and the deal is sealed.  (“We’ll have it announced in church tomorrow and surprise everybody…even Priscilla.”)  I’ll say.  Upstairs, as Priscilla plots the next trick Joel can play on Mark, they have a close moment and she impulsively kisses him.  His dreamy smile afterwards shows that he is equally besotted with her.

 

In true sea faring fashion, Mark’s “sudden burst of love” inspires a drinking and carousing night on the town (must be fun to be married to him, eh?) and Joel shows up at the bar in Mark’s best jacket, looking like a kid who got into his father’s clothes closet.  There is lots of singing and showing of tattoos before all hell breaks loose – yep, men are still the same (too much testosterone and it doesn’t mix well with alcohol).  Inadvertently youngster Joel gets credit for licking “Dog-nose Danny,” a tough sailor, which entitles him, according to sailor logic, to sail for Singapore with his brother Mark, his dream come true.  Oh, the way men must prove their might and merit!

 

As is typical among the pious, after the Saturday night shenanigans, everyone is in church next morning on Sunday, bruised or not.  More hell breaks loose, albeit quietly -- the betrothal of Mark and Priscilla is announced.  Shock and unhappiness show on the faces of Priscilla and Joel yet the die has been cast and Priscilla appears to glumly accept her fate, leaving the church with Mark.  As the brothers are about to set sail the next day, she comes to see the ship off.  Like a true damsel in distress, her doll-like face peeping from beneath a bonnet, she is repelled by Mark's advances and refuses his kisses.  Yet when she tries to let Joel know her true heart's desire in a fabulous pantomime scene (one of my favorite scenes in the entire film) and that she is not in love with Mark, he scorns her inexplicably, telling her she is betrothed.  It seems not to matter that the whole dang marriage was arranged without her consent, might as well have been sold into slavery.  One wonders why Joel would do this to her and to himself. 

 

At sea, Mark has obsessive visions of Priscilla, haunted by her rejection (and the vision of loveliness scorns him in his dreams, too), and these  “storms of the heart,” as he puts it, occupy him more than the storms at sea.  The scenes at sea are fun with backdrops of huge waves that would’ve swamped the boat hours ago and lots of water splashing the principals.  Again, Joel inexplicably reassures his brother about Priscilla's love, even though Mark believes she loves someone else (and Joel must know who that is.)  Brother Noah is shortly swept to sea and the two surviving brothers reach Singapore where a lively set has been provided to lend exotic flavor including lots of extras in costume.  An uncredited and beautiful Anna May Wong takes up immediately (and inexplicably) with the homely Mark, much to the fury of her sailor-man.  Like Crawford, Wong is very young, cute as can be, and fuller-faced here.  She’s an exotic beauty – dainty and alluring, and the fact that the sailors help themselves to the women as if they’re commodities pretty much tells us that East is as bad for women as West.  Joel again is intent on keeping Priscilla and Mark true to each other and in typical male fashion, Mark blames Priscilla for his troubles as if she had any say in anything. 

 

Attacked for stealing the Oriental beauty from the original sailor-beau (oh, these poor girls), Mark is taken for dead and the Nathan Ross comes home with flags flying at half mast.  Joel is brought back in irons for deserting his brother, trumped charges by shipmate Finch (Jim Mason).  Although Novarro is a heartthrob of the first order, reminiscent of that cutest boy in any high school and charms in the “light” scenes, he isn’t terribly convincing dramatically.  Given that I’ve only seen him in one film, I can’t comment on his abilities as a whole, but here his idea of conveying serious emotion is letting his face go slack.  Consequently, when confronted about the charges of cowardice and given a chance to explain, he assumes a limp look.  Then, kicking into life unexpectedly, he tries to throttle Finch for lying, which only makes him look worse.  Later he seeks out Priscilla (who has no cause to champion him after his shameless lack of support for her plight) to ask if she believes in his innocence, hinting that he is still attracted to her.  But Priscilla's hopes for being with her true love are quickly sabotaged when Joel brings up the "M" word and insists that he is still alive and waiting for her.  Worse, he forces the poor girl to go to Singapore with him to get back this man she doesn’t love, outrageously saying, “You made him love you and now you’re not goin’ to quit him when he needs you.”  He actually carries the sobbing and protesting damsell away bodily, shameless cad.  However, as the ship sets sail with Priscilla “trapped” on board, helplessly watching the gangway drawn up, a sexy little expression crosses her face to indicate she isn’t completely unhappy with the arrangement.  Meanwhile Mark has become a “gibbering derelict,” as the title cards reveal, with even his Asian love muffin and her sympathetic mother cringing from him, and just as Priscilla is working her charms on Joel deep at sea, a bedraggled and grotesque Mark comes crawling over the side of the boat like anyone’s worst nightmare and Joel is ready to fling his beloved back into his brother’s seaweed-draped arms. 

 

Who will win the fair lady’s hand in the end?  Will the ship survive mutiny at sea?  Or will Crawford, as in “Twelve Miles Out” and “Strange Cargo,” find herself the “booty prize” for a pack of predatory seafaring wolves, the sassy wench mutinous sailors lust after?

 

In spite of a script that falls to pieces as it goes along, the leads are quite good.  It’s an interesting study in gender roles with rough housing, horsing around and even brutality supposedly making men men and demureness, helplessness and true-heartedness defining the woman although Crawford shows spirit beneath the sweet, wistful beauty and fragility.  And once again, it is her face that blows me away, extraordinary faces like hers making silents a powerful art form.  The tenderness and expressiveness of her eyes alone, their sheer poetic beauty, is astonishing.  To appreciate the older actress fully, it is essential to see her in her early career.  Her silent screen heritage was rich training that made her such an effective, emotional and facially communicative actress and her artistry was that she gave her all. – D. Nowak