Rent Manuela (1957)

Marine Melodrama. - Manuela review by Steve

Dark, gloomy melodrama surely influenced by the poetic realism of prewar France, with its fog and pessimism and doomed romance. In a destitute South American port- where an accordion plays and the company of a woman can be bought- a lusty mechanic off a ramshackle cargo steamer (Pedro Armendáriz) smuggles a shoeless waif (Elsa Martinella) on board.

And the pouting teenager inflicts maximum distraction on the salty, multinational crew. She ingratiates herself to the infatuated, middle aged captain (Trevor Howard), but really, he's too numb to open up his heart again... Eventually the ship's engine overheats and explodes and deposits the exploited girl and the crew into the ocean...

It's a hot, moody drama and the loneliness of the men settles over the action like a sombre mist. We are human cargo, enchanted by beauty and desire. Nothing can end well. Howard's oppressive, poetic melancholy is as much an ambience as a performance. Martinelli is most affecting as the pitiful stray. And sexy too, naturally.

So it's a ship of archetypes and a familiar plot. But the atmosphere is everything, and thankfully the desolate fatalism survives all the way to the fade out. There's a splendidly hot blooded script and artistic black and white photography of a make believe world where lost souls medicate their isolation with whisky and ribaldry.