Dick Powell in Robert Stevenson's "To the Ends of the Earth" (1948)
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- Based on the files of the United States Department of Treasury. In 1935, United States Narcotics Agent, Commissioner Michael Barrows (Dick Powell) and the Coast Guard spot a freighter suspected of smuggling drugs along the California coast. They give chase. Barrows watches helplessly through binoculars as the freighter captain (Frank Mayo) has many chained slave laborers thrown overboard to drown. The ship escapes by passing beyond the 12-mile limit and entering international waters. Horrified by what he has seen, Barrows determines to smash the narcotics ring, without first clearing it with his boss, Commissioner H. J. Anslinger (as himself).
The trail leads Barrows to Shanghai. His Chinese counterpart, Commissioner Lum Chi Chow (Vladimir Sokoloff), has obtained information from a dying man, escaped from a slave labor gang growing poppies in Egypt. Chow believes the poppies will be smuggled into Shanghai. Suspicion falls on Nicholas Sokim (Ludwig Donath), he has a criminal record, but he claims to have been out of the drug business for years. During his investigation, Barrows meets recent widow Ann Grant (Signe Hasso), who is preparing to send orphan Chinese teenager Shu Pan Wu (Maylia) to the safety of the United States. When a drug processing lab is discovered beneath Sokim's business, Sokim commits suicide.
Barrows travels to Egypt, and teams up with British Commissioner Lionel Hadley (Vernon Steele) and French Commissioner Lariesier (Marcel Journet). They managed to locate the poppy fields on land belonging to Binda Sha (Fritz Leiber). When Binda Sha realizes he has been caught, he throws himself off a cliff to his death.
Meanwhile, the unprocessed drugs are smuggled to Beirut in the stomachs of camels. The camels are slaughtered and the drugs retrieved. An alert agent spots them being transferred to innocent-looking butter containers sent aboard a ship bound for New York via Havana under the watchful eye of Naftalie Vrandstadter (Ivan Triesault).
Barrows boards the ship and once again encounters Ann Grant and Shu Pan Wu. As they near New York, the drugs disappear under cover of a fire. Barrows summons the Coast Guard, who capture the drug ring's boat and the drugs. He takes the recovered packages and heads to shore with Ann and Shu Pan Wu. Shu Pan Wu steals a revolver and orders the crew to sail to a different location. When Barrows advances on her, she shoots him without hesitation, however, the gun is loaded with blanks. Shu Pan Wu turns out to be the adult leader of the ring.
A 1948 American Black & White film-noir thriller film directed by Robert Stevenson, produced by Sidney Buchman, written by Jay Richard Kennedy and Sidney Buchman, cinematography by Burnett Guffey, starring Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, Maylia, Ludwig Donath, Vladimir Sokoloff, Edgar Barrier, John Hoyt, Marcel Journet, Luis Van Rooten, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Raffetto. Released by Columbia Pictures.
In a number of newsreel clips, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger , appears as himself. Anslinger, together with the assistance of his crime fighting government agency, made the making of this movie possible.
The film opened February 12, 1948 and was the number one film at the US box office for the week.
"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on May 23, 1949 with Dick Powell and Signe Hasso reprising their film roles.
The idea of drug trafficking and addiction as social threats didn't emerge until the post-war years when marijuana and heroin no longer confined themselves to urban residents and jazz musicians. Though the subject would seem a natural for film noir, the cycle as a whole ignored it, except for odd references (Jules Amthor drugging Philip Marlowe in "Murder, My Sweet" (1944), for example. But in the late 1940s, two films took on the phenomenon directly: "Port of New York" (1949), and this. Both films show the stridency that would soon come to be characteristic of the Red Scare films of the early 1950s. "Port of New York", however, effectively explored its noirish milieu, while this film harks back to the international espionage pictures of wartime and the pre-war years.
TV Guide liked the film and wrote, "An engrossing, globetrotting semi-documentary on the evils of narcotics pushers, specifically those who try smuggling opium onto U.S. shores...The chief factor in the film's success as an adventure picture is the realistic documentary approach."
A fun, serial-like adventure movie that harkens back to a time when Japan dominated wartime China, and the colonial empires of England and France were crumbling in the Middle East. The nuts and bolts of the drug trade operated by a global cartel retain surprising interest, and the pace of this fascinating, neglected, semi-noir with a documentary feel picks up as it progresses, right up to a fairly shocking twist at the end. A polished piece of tense adult crime drama film making. The suspense draws you in.
Mr Powell was a singer, actor, director... an all round talent
Dick Powell.
What a name.
Good actor too.
I guess when someone told him "Don't be a dick", he answered "But I am!"
Seems like we have fallen a long way from the times when Men would go to these extremes to stop evil.......Now evil is what our commissions seems to thrive in...good is evil and evil is good!
That's how their father the devil acts, so do they..everything reversed along with chaos,death and wars allover the world. Everything we now see worldwide, is described with details in the Apocalypse...Thank God
you are a cynic. us good are still fighting & winning.
Especially when huge profits through the trade of arms/weapons and drugs line so many pockets - and government treasuries.
@@VictoriaAlfredSmythe where have you been living?
@@JamesJones-yj8ku we were born & live in Manhattan
Magnificent
Dick Powell was big time. Actor, Director. It's really sad that the event of the movie was going on then in 1935. The movie was made in 1948. The event surrounding the story is still going on our Present day life. Afghanistan, Turkey, Lebanon, South American and right into the streets of North America.
& Producer
..a rum, pacey, well-analytical movie…🎉
It's fascinating what movies, due to the infamous Hays Code, could and couldn't do in 1948. Big studio efforts weren't allowed to talk about drugs or what they did...but they COULD release semi-documentaries like this depicting the Treasury Department's tireless efforts to stop them. This one is more notable for the things it DOESN'T do rather than what it does: it's relatively non-racist (mostly) in its depiction of the Asian characters, including the bad guys, so you don't have to be too apologetic about enjoying it. It's a little more nuts-and-bolts in detailing just how opium gets made and distributed; the animal-lover in me was outraged to learn about the camel abuse involved! And the way it deals with the issue of how involved America should get in other nations' business in order to keep nasty substances from entering our gates (still a major part of our Presidential races) is by not really dealing with it at all; it focuses entirely on the mission itself, with Dick Powell's musical comedy background keeping its narration from being too stiff. In fact, stylistically this predates Jack Webb's most famous radio and TV creation two years before Joe Friday played William Holden's buddy in Sunset Boulevard. You could retitle this movie "Drugnet". 7/10.