Wonderfully offbeat film!

Let's be realistic.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I hardly knew what to expect when I played this offering from a nifty 4-disc set of Harlow films from Turner-Classic.In this one, Cable, a naval commander, has tired of his skullery-maid-like former consort (Harlow), discarding her for a high-class prospect (Ros Russell). Harlow doesn't like it, and teams up with a crooked officer, Wallace Beery, who has cut a deal with some villainous pirates. This role required Harlow to be a semi-trashy blond bombshell, which fits her platinum blond persona (but she could do characters of a higher class, when required -- see 'Wife and Secretary' with Gable and Myrna Loy)** Spoilers below **Remember, though: the Hayes production code was now being enforced, which meant that Beery and Harlow could not profit from their crime.So, the good guys win, in the end, but Gable says he will stick with his pretty former-consort Harlow--even marry her--but first she must face the justice system for her role in an attempted theft. I doubt the original story ended that way, but the Code demanded that villains NOT prosper from their nefarious deeds - so, Harlow will face prison for 3 to 5, I guess. If made in 1932, that film would have ended with Gable suppressing the role Harlow played, and marrying her the same day, in a local church!Contrast this to 'Dinner at 8' made only a few years earlier with Harlow and Wallace Beery. Two (at least) of the female major players are guilty of indiscretions, but escape unscathed.China seas was a pleasant surprise, and featured a brutal storm at sea, done with tons of water and wind machines (no FX in those days)..Recommended. 8/10

A pretty good movie with an excellent cast and some decent special effects. Gable is at his best and the same can be said for Beery , Sir C. and Harlow. I haven't seen many Harlow films but I'm assuming that her stock character is the one she portrays here , a sort of bad girl with a heart of gold, a lovable moron who speaks first and thinks later. The kind of woman who (if she were your wife/girlfriend) would ruin a party and make a big scene if she became jealous. In other words the kind of woman most men might stupidly have casual sex with and then realizing what an idiot they were saddled with, run away from as fast as they could. I'm guessing many depression era women could identify with her low class stubborn pride but now she seems like an annoying , shrill, infantile idiot constantly seeking approval. As a portrait of this kind of woman , Harlow is magnificent. You might want to strangle her or throw her overboard but she's always watchable, the bra less gowns help.

This film has some good things going for it. First, a cast of MGM's finest -- Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russel, Robert Benchley, among others. Gable is the skipper of a somewhat battered passenger liner in Asiatic waters. Harlow is the girl he's been associated with, so to speak, a little "tainted", as Gable puts it. But who the hell is HE to talk? He comes aboard just before sailing, filthy and unshaven, hung over. He barks out orders to the crew and to just about everyone else. Rosalind Russel is an old flame from London and her husband has died so she is now "available." Wallace Beery is a likable big lug who gambles and drinks but is in cahoots with some pirates who take over the ship, just after the big hurricane hits. Benchley is thrown in as a harmless drunk given to wisecracks and non sequiturs, only one of which (about his being a chess master) is truly funny.Second, there is the set dressing by Cedric Gibbons. Love it. Everything is painted white. The crummy little ship has a saloon the size of Madison Square Garden. This is one of those films in which all the men dress in white suits and wear pith helmets. The women's garb is more nearly traditional. Rosalind Russell has an English accent and an equally hoity-toity wardrobe. Harlow is dressed in slinky gowns that seem to glow in the dark and she eschews brassieres.There are some slam-bang special effects during the hurricane. And a great scene in which the Malay pirates take over the ship and torture Gable to get him to squeal about where the gold is hidden. "Oh, NO! Not the Malay BOOT! Tell them where the gold is. I can't stand to witness this!" (That's Wallace Beery, who hasn't been outed as a traitor yet, in mock anguish over the torture Gable is about to undergo.) It seems that we're all set up for another rousing, funny, exotic adventure movie along the lines of "Gunga Din," except that the script keeps undercutting the light-heartedness with serious, sometimes rather insightful dialog. Example: Harlow is jealous of Russell and, at the captain's dinner table, she has a couple of drinks and starts shouting lewd and suggestive remarks. Russell: "You must be very fond of him." Harlow: "Whaddaya mean?" Russell: "To humiliate yourself like this." There are a lot of ways Russell's punch line could have been delivered -- angrily, with bitchiness, for instance, but Russell's tone and expression convey empathy and sadness. Gable too is given some sober, thoughtful exchanges but acts as if he can't quite bring himself to believe what he's saying, as if he'd prefer the careless, rough-hewn character that first appeared on the screen, kind of like his character in "Red Dust." It's an above average flick for its genre though. All that whiteness is almost blinding.

The studios in the "Golden Age" of films loved to stick to successful formulas that worked for their actors and directors. Just go down the list of performers that you can recall: A fine actor like Basil Rathbone is either the heavy or villain, or Sherlock Holmes (but not, as he wished, Rhett Butler). Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich could not play normal housewives, nor could Joan Crawford play a stupid woman. Oliver Hardy could always have a wife, but never a happy marriage (and if it approached happiness, Stan Laurel would help destroy that). Lewis Stone, sterling character actor, only achieved permanent stardom when he inherited the role of Judge Hardy from Lionel Barrymore, and he would remain the perfect, wise father to Mickey Rooney in a dozen films. As for Barrymore, while he had a higher degree of stardom than Stone, he fell nicely into a niche as the original Dr. Leonard Gilespie, opposite Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare.In 1932 MGM got the bright idea of making a dramatic film of Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel" with an all star cast (John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, and Tully Marshall). The film won the best picture Oscar, so it became a standard for other MGM projects to copy. The best known is "Dinner At Eight" (both Barrymore brothers again, Beery again, Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Billy Burke, Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Hersholt again). But "David Copperfield", "The Prisoner OF Zenda", and several other Selznick films, and "The Women" (with only a cast of actresses - Crawford, Shearer, Russell, Fontaine, Goddard, and Boland) followed the same formula with variants by the settings and plots of the films."China Seas" was an early example of the formula "all star" film, a "Grand Hotel" set at sea. The plot is varied: C. Aubrey Smith is having a cargo of gold shipped by his ship captained by Gable. The passengers include Harlow (who has had a long standing on-again, off-again romance with Gable), Russell (Gable's current love interest - a real English lady type), Beery (an untrustworthy gambler and thief - he may be planning to steal the gold), Robert Benchley (an American novelist on a permanent toot), Edward Brophy and Lillian Bond as a married couple on a tour (Ms Bond has her secrets from her husband), Akim Tamiroff (a man who knows how to take advantage of secrets), Dudley Digges (a self-satisfied and smug chief executive officer), and Lewis Stone (a former sea captain, now reduced in rank and a pariah due to an act of cowardice).The film is a lively mixture of comedy and tragedy, including the death of one of the villains. Harlow demonstrates an interesting way of playing cards and drinking that suggests more than the film shows. Benchley never appears clear eyed and sober throughout all the film. Stone, in a powerful moment, leaves the self-righteous Digges with a permanent black mark on his self-esteem. Gable and Beery show what the "boot" is, and how effective it is. This is a film where the activities of the cast are so involving you never get bored even when you see the film another time. And at the end, as the ship reaches port (as in "Grand Hotel"), life goes on as though nothing (including a pirate attack) ever even occurred.