by Stephen Vagg
Things went from bad to worse for Australia’s leading film producers of the 1950s, as they made the South Seas melodrama, The Stowaway.
As mentioned in Part Three of this series, in 1955 Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty signed a two-picture deal with a French company to make movies together.
This arrangement was fraught with hazards, as it involved shooting French and English language versions of the same story, with different directors (Robinson and a French one) and a multi-national cast. Yet the relationship began brilliantly with the New Guinea adventure tale Walk into Paradise, which proved to be a giant hit around the world in 1956 – arguably the most financially successful Australian film ever made until that moment.
The second film was originally announced as The Women of Tahiti or Viva Tahiti. Then plans solidified – it would be The Stowaway, from 1949 novel by Belgian author Georges Simenon, one of the most prolific and successful writers of the 20th century, perhaps best remembered today for the Maigret novels.
The Stowaway concerned various colourful types searching for the missing heir to a fortune in Tahiti, including a lawyer, conman, Sadie Thompson-esque shady lady and a murderous criminal. We’ve never read the book, but based on the final film, it feels as though it would have made a lively 1940s Warner Bros movie shot on the studio backlot with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
Incidentally, the novel wasn’t a bad choice for an international co-production – the basic story was relatively simple (searching for a missing person), it provided opportunities for location filming (Pacific, Tahiti, beaches), and being a “dodgy people in the South Seas” tale meant audiences would expect anyone to turn up, thus made it easier for them to accept an international cast. (Some trivia: the novel was later filmed for French TV in 1995, starring Simon Callow.)
According to Lee Robinson’s oral history interview with Graham Shirley, the French were keen to get going on The Stowaway immediately after Walk into Paradise, but Rafferty and Robinson had commitments to make Dust in the Sun, so filming didn’t happen until late 1957. The shoot took place in Tahiti and the Society Islands – as we understand it, there was some filming in a small studio on Tahiti, as well as on an ocean liner (they appear to have definitely not used Robinson and Rafferty’s studio space in Sydney). The cast included actors from France (Martine Carol as the shady lady prostitute stowaway), Germany (Karl Boehm, as the good sailor who loves Carol), Italy (Serge Reggiani as the killer), England (Roger Livesey as the conman) and Australia (Reg Lye as an English lawyer).
No one talks about Martine Carol these days, at least not in English-speaking film buff land, but in the 1950s, she was genuinely famous around the world due to her sexy public image in films like Lola Montez and Nana (plus an exotic private life). The Stowaway also featured an appearance from Arletty, the iconic French star of movies such as Children of Paradise, whose career never really recovered from serving a jail sentence in 1945 for having a tryst with a German officer during the war. The French director who worked with Robinson on this one was Ralph Habib – according to Robinson, the relationship between the directors wasn’t as smooth as the one he’d had with Marcello Pagliero on Walk into Paradise, possibly because the latter had an all-Australian crew and was shot in an Australian territory, whereas The Stowaway used a half-Australian half-English crew and was filmed in French territory.
The Stowaway was released in France in 1958 and given a limited release in Britain in 1959 and Australia in 1960. The French and English versions have different credits, and the former is around ten minutes longer, although structurally, the versions are almost identical – the difference lies in the length of specific scenes. We think that the movie made a bit of a splash in France but not a huge one, and it definitely performed poorly in English-speaking countries; Robinson says that it lost money.
The Stowaway isn’t much of a film, in French or English – the French version feels more smoothly made (those extra ten minutes make the action feel less clunky) but even that is full of flaws. The main culprits were the French, who clearly had greater creative input here than on Walk into Paradise, but Robinson and Rafferty can’t escape blame either.
First, Chips Rafferty isn’t in the film. Robinson later claimed that there wasn’t a role for him but that’s not true – the parts played by Reg Lye and especially Roger Livesey could’ve been taken by Rafferty. It would have involved a re-imagining of the characters, but it would have made sense that English firms would hire an Australian to search the south seas. The French insisted on their stars, which we get, but Robinson told Graham Shirley that it was his decision to hire Livesey (hardly a box office name), then appearing in a stage show in Australia when cast – and prior to that, he’d announced Trevor Howard for the role, so he clearly had an English actor in mind. Although that’s how the character was written in the novel, this was a mistake. We love Livesey – I Know Where I’m Going is one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time – but Rafferty would have had a more virile, compelling presence. He was also coming off two big hits as well – Walk into Paradise and Smiley (where he played a local bush copper).
Secondly, it’s not a very good script. The female lead is far too passive for a leading role, and we really never see her conversion from bad girl to good girl on screen. Most egregiously, we never meet the missing heir that everyone is looking for! The whole thing is a chase for this guy, and we don’t meet him – it’s very unsatisfactory. We assume it was that way in the novel, but so what?
Thirdly, too much of the film consists of people sitting inside talking – the very same problem that Dust in the Sun had. We understand that schedule-wise you can do more in a studio, but there’s far too many scenes in The Stowaway that take place in rooms and/or at night. This was an adventure tale set in Panama, Tahiti and the Pacific Ocean… we needed more scenes with those things in the background.
Fourthly, the technical quality of the movie was poor. The photography isn’t great, at least not in the versions we’ve seen, the editing was choppy and the dubbing in the “English language version” was atrocious. Robinson used a lot of post-synching on his films, but for whatever reason, the work on The Stowaway was appalling.
The Stowaway reminded us of those movies made by the Rank Organisation in the late 1950s designed to storm the world market like Whirlpool and Ferry from Hong Kong – like them, The Stowaway has colour photography, foreign locations, a cosmopolitan cast, is based on a novel, and doesn’t quite work. It’s a series of assembled ingredients rather than a proper film.
To take a walk on the sunny side, the acting is accomplished, Martine Carol is a lot of fun (she looks like a Gold Coast cougar, with her deep tan and peroxide hair), Boehm was solid, Livesey and Lye are entertaining, it’s fun to see Arletty pop up, ditto Australian actors like Reg Lye, Doris Fitton (a gossipy tourist) and James Condon (ship’s purser), and the Tahitian setting is interesting.
That doesn’t mean the film worked. And it didn’t. Although it could have.
So, looking back, what lessons can be learned from The Stowaway?
- Use your strengths. For Robinson and Rafferty, these included location filming, Chips Rafferty’s screen presence, and simple stories which still hit the basic beats. The Stowaway has too much studio work, no Chips Rafferty and a simple story which misses key beats.
- Downplay your weaknesses. Robinson was never good with talky movies, overly complex plots, studio-based scenes and imported actors. The Stowaway has all four.
- If you go all the way to a location, shoot the crap out of it. Tahiti is not used nearly enough in The Stowaway.
- Get the script basics right. If the story revolves around a search for a missing person, find the person. If you have a leading character who changes their motivation from “greedy” to “in love” show why.
- Don’t be over-awed. Reading about this movie, we can’t help but get the feeling that Robinson and Rafferty might have been overly impressed with their French colleagues – “we’re making a real movie with real money and real stars; they know more than us.” Sometimes self-deprecation can be self-sabotage.
- When in doubt, add sex and violence. The Stowaway could have done with more of both.
Robinson blamed the failure of the film in part on the impact of television, and that would not have helped, but neither did the fact that the movie isn’t very good. Like Dust in the Sun, The Stowaway might have succeeded with more action/sex/location work/Chips Rafferty and less talk/studio/night scenes/dubbed dialogue.
The Stowaway was a second failure for Rafferty and Robinson. They had one last chance to turn things around…
The author would like to thank the National Film and Sound Archive and Graham Shirley for their assistance with this article. Unless otherwise specified, all opinions are the author’s.
