Across the Pacific

Overview

With The Maltese Falcon (1941, Dir. John Huston), it was clear to John Huston and Warner Bros. that they had a rare winning team assembled with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet. The screenplay adaptation from Aloha Means Goodbye (a serialized story by Robert Carson) has Bogart’s character dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. Word gets around in military circles. His reputation is in such ruin that he can’t even get a shooting gig with the Canadians. In later scenes, we see that he is really going undercover to undermine the work of dangerous spies, including the gentleman villain, Sydney Greenstreet. Sailing on a Japanese freighter, he meets Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet) and Mary Astor’s character, Alberta. Astor this time is a far cry from the duplicitous Bridgette O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon, 1941) so it is more comfortable for us to watch the lovers sparking here. There are light scenes between them that are almost Rom-Com in tone. Alberta seems quite innocent. Or is she?

By the time our clip begins, when he is pretending to traitorously sell Dr. Lorenz some critical military information, Bogey is knee-deep in Japanese spies.