What a waste of my time!!!

Amateur movie with Big budget

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

SYNOPSIS: WW2 navy man returns to Singapore to take up his old occupation of pearl smuggling. However, it turns out that the wife he thought killed in a Japanese air raid is still alive, though suffering from amnesia — and now married to someone else!NOTES: Re-made as "Istanbul" (1957) with Errol Flynn and Cornell Borchers.COMMENT: This silly story is — incredibly — mostly the work of Seton I. Miller (The Dawn Patrol, Bullets or Ballots, Marked Woman,The Sea Hawk, The Black Swan, Ministry of Fear, Two Years Before the Mast). It manages to combine a melodramatic tale of pearl smuggling with an equally incredible tale of re-marriage and amnesia. The way the writers stretch moral values and all sense of what is believable to bring about the anticipated happy ending, is a miracle of pre- liberal censorship.Director John Brahm handles this tosh quite seriously, as if it were Graham Greene at his moodily moralistic best. The players certainly way out-class their shoddy material. Ava Gardner, exquisitely gowned and beautifully photographed, moves with customary grace through the attractive sets; whilst Porter Hall supplies a delightful impersonation of a tourist/plumber, and the ubiquitous Philip Ahn makes a surprise appearance as a barman!Other technical credits are equally first-rate. But what a pity such a pleasing music score is squandered on this sorry concoction of story and character clichés!Still, we're probably being a bit hard on Singapore. Any film with Ava is certainly well worth seeing. If you're not too critical, this one will doubtless give good entertainment.

Fred's back from the service looking to retrieve the pearls he was smuggling before Singapore was invaded and is haunted by the memory of what he thinks is his lost love Ava. One day she reappears but she doesn't remember him. What's the answer to the mystery?Studio bound adventure is entertaining enough but serves more as a study in star building. This was Ava Gardner's last film before she moved into the top tier of MGM stars with her next film, One Touch of Venus. Having scored heavily in two supporting roles for her home studio, The Killers & The Hucksters, they loaned her to Universal for the female lead in this alongside the established Fred MacMurray to test her lead appeal with minimal risk. She seems a bit cautious at times but radiates star quality every second she's on screen. Considering the magnitude of the stars in the leads this is curiously obscure but if you enjoyed Gilda or similar fare it's worth the time.

On her way up the Hollywood ladder MGM loaned Ava Gardner out for this potboiler adventure film Singapore. As the area suggests romance and mystery just the title alone would bring in a few customers at the box office. In fact Singapore still is an area of intrigue though now enjoying a prosperity that could not have been imagined when this film was made.Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner are a pair of star crossed lovers who marry just before the Japanese invade and occupy the city. MacMurray has a fortune in pearls that he stashes and while trying to retrieve them the bombs are dropped and he thinks Gardner is killed. He barely gets away in his schooner with other refugees without pearls and without Ava who he married just before the attack.After the war Fred's back to get his pearls, but he sees Ava now married to Roland Culver and with a bad case of amnesia. And he's got other problems as villains Thomas Gomez and George Lloyd want them as well. Singapore was created on the Universal back lot and didn't have the advantage that its remake Istanbul had with color and location shooting. But they did make a better film though not all that much better. It's been compared to Casablanca by many to the detriment of Singapore. But those letters of transit that will allow two people, which two to escape and join the fight against Nazism are a much bigger prize than Fred's pearls. You care a lot more about Bogey, Bergman, and Henreid than the triangle here. And this film didn't have As Time Goes By either.MacMurray and Gardner also don't have the chemistry that Bogey and Bergman do. But that's not fair, who else ever did?Singapore is your routine potboiler another film MacMurray was grabbing for the paycheck after he left Paramount. As for Ava after The Killers and The Hucksters it was not a step down, but just keeping her on the same career plateau as before.

Not quite a melodrama; not quite a suspense thriller. Not quite an A movie but certainly not a B-level. Singapore takes place, of course, in Singapore, just as the Japanese are invading and then just after the end of WWII. It's a reasonably solid, efficient story of three people: Matt Gordon (Fred MacMurray), a suave and slightly sardonic smuggler of pearls. Gordon is an honest man at heart, but usually can't resist easy money and the kind of gambles necessary to win it; Michael Van Leyden (Roland Culver), a wealthy planter who spent most of the wars years in a Japanese-run prison camp. He's a brisk, authoritative man with one great weakness. He loves his wife; and Linda Grahame (Ava Gardiner), a beautiful, sultry young woman, perhaps something of an adventuress. She and Gordon fall in love and are to be married. Then the Japanese invade, bombs fall, and when Gordon leaves Linda for a moment to retrieve pearls he had hidden in his hotel room, he returns without the pearls to burning waterfront ruins and no sign of Linda. He searches desperately and then must leave in his boat, which is crowded with refugees. We can imagine his surprise five years later when he returns to Singapore after the war and sees in a posh nightclub a beautiful young woman who looks exactly like Linda. She is dancing with Van Leyden...and when she is introduced to Matt Gordon, he learns she is Ann Van Leyden, Michael's wife. Yes, that most useful of plot devices is established...amnesia. Matt Gordon is determined to do two things. He is certain that if Ann Van Leyden can only recover her memory she will remember him and their love. He is almost equally determined to recover the pearls he had hidden in his hotel room before the war. Van Leyden is determined to keep his wife, whom he loves dearly, by his side. They had met in that prison camp during the war. Van Leyden saved Ann many times. He will do almost anything, except cause her unhappiness, to save her again. And Ann...or is it Linda? What does she want? See the movie. Hovering in the background is the shady Mr. Mauribus (Thomas Gomez), a large-figured and often sweaty crook who has a claim to Gordon's pearls. While Mauribus won't stoop to physical violence himself, his assistant, Sascha, is all too eager to be let off the lease. It's no spoiler to say that everyone except Mr. Mauribus and Sascha eventually act with honor. A happy ending is in the cards at the start of the movie when Matt Gordon enters the old hotel, pauses in the lobby and then tells a bellhop to take his luggage to his room. He looks around the deserted bar and then walks to a small table for two, partly hidden by palm fronds. When the waiter arrives, Gordon orders two gin slings. Yes, that was what he and Linda always drank here, hidden away in their own world. For Fred MacMurray, a reliable and versatile leading man, this is one more of the many lead roles he took where his personality and competence made a career for him. If he didn't set many sparks off, he also didn't make many duds. For Ava Gardner, however, this was one of her early starring roles where the studio was deliberately building her up for bigger and better things. She looks great, acts a bit, and has a sympathetic character to play. For me, the joy and interest in the movie, however, rests with three character actors. There's Richard Haydn playing deputy commissioner Hewitt. It's a straight, honest role and Haydn does it just fine. The fun is remembering all those comic roles Haydn worked his way into, where he deliberately unleashed his adenoids. Watch him as the butler in And Then There Were None (1945). Few people could play oozy, greasy opportunists, cowards and villains as well as Thomas Gomez. Given a chance, he also could do just fine in sympathetic parts. Watch him as John Garfield's older brother in Force of Evil (1948). Most of all, there's Roland Culver, a superb, highly skilled British actor who spent some time in Hollywood but returned to England. He was at his very best playing highly competent men of the world. He was as much at home in sophisticated comedy as he was in serious drama. For the sophisticated comedy part, you can't do better than to watch him in On Approval (1944). And to prove he hadn't lost his edge in old age, watch him as the elderly and irascible Duke of Omnium in The Pallisers (1974).