The Bribe (1949)

The Bribe is a 1949 film noir based on a Frederick Nebel story.

Whether The Bribe is true film noir or a noirish melodrama can be debated. It does have major affinities with another genre that flourished in the 40s and early 50s - thrillers in exotic settings with an atmosphere of tropical sin and moral corruption. Movies like Macau, The Shanghai Gesture and Saigon.

This is one of those noirs that doesn’t rely on shadows and darkness in the mean streets of a big city. Instead we get the blazing tropical sun, lots of sweat and an exotic atmosphere in which sin and corruption flourish. Passions get overheated.

Rigby (Robert Taylor) is a G-Man investigating a racket in stolen military aircraft engines. The trail leads to South America. To a place called Carlotta. This is definitely the tropics and presumably it’s the Caribbean. It seemed to be a general belief at that time that when Americans went bad, or finally realised themselves to be irredeemable failures, they always ended up in the tropics.

Soon after arrival Rigby encounters Elizabeth Hintten (Ava Gardner). She’s a sultry night-club singer and she gives off major bad girl vibes. But when he gets to meet her Rigby finds that she’s actually really sweet. She’s a really nice girl. That’s it for Rigby. He’s falling for this girl big time.

Her drunken loser husband Tug (John Hodiak) might be a problem, especially given that he’s a prime suspect in the aero engine racket.

There a couple of other shady characters floating about. THere’s a sleazy old guy named Bealer (Charles Laughton) who just oozes moral corruption. He seems too hopeless to be involved in a major racket but the evidence certainly points that way. And then there’s Carwood (Vincent Price), a businessman Rigby met on the plane to South America. Carwood was headed for Peru. His turning up at Carlotta is quite the coincidence.

Rigby is investigating the case but he’s spending most of his time mooning over Elizabeth. And she’s giving off damsel in distress vibes. The unhappy wife, tied to a loser drunk with whom she is obviously no longer in love. Rigby has definite knight in shining armour tendencies, especially when the damsel in distress is both really sweet and smokin’ hot.

Rigby has always been an honest cop and he’s not the sort of guy who would ever turn crooked through mere greed. But there are other inducements besides money. And Elizabeth is very cute.

This was a significant step in Robert Taylor’s reinvention of himself as a battered world-weary cynical anti-hero filled with self-loathing. No more of the lightweight pretty boy stuff. This reinvention turned out to be a brilliant idea. Few actors could portray cynics more successfully. He’s in top form here.

Charles Laughton is of course great fun. Vincent Price is delightfully oily.

This is a very good role for Ava Gardner. Elizabeth is not a straightforward femme fatale. She may not be a femme fatale. She may be the nice girl she appears to be. Rigby is sure she’s not involved in anything dishonest, but he’s not exactly unbiased. Gardner plays it subtle. Rigby wants to trust her and he’s convinced himself that he can trust her but there’s that tiny seed of doubt. The audience is in the same boat.

The odd thing about Ava Gardner’s career is that she gave some of her very best performances in movies that have been underrated and under-appreciated. Movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and Whistle Stop (1946). She herself was inclined to be dismissive of her acting career, rather unfairly.

There’s a decent crime plot here but this is a character study of a man not just tempted but torn. He doesn’t know which way to jump. He wants to do the right thing but he’s no longer sure what that means.

Robert Z. Leonard is the kind of director usually scornfully dismissed by auteurist critics, and he was certainly no auteur. He was one of those competent craftsmen and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some years earlier he had directed the very underrated pre-code Greta Garbo melodrama Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) and there are some affinities between that film and The Bribe - both deal with moral degradation in exotic settings.

The climactic action sequence really is superbly done.

The Bribe doesn’t tick all the noir boxes but it ticks quite a few of them and whether it’s really noir or not it’s still an excellent movie. Very highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very nice transfer.