One of my all time favorites
This is one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in terms of cinematography. Hong Kong was colorful and facinating, a world that doesn't exist 60 years later. I would gladly trade my old VHS for a fresh remastered DVD. The plot has been covered several times so I'd just like to mention a few individual scenes that stand out. Susan and Clark standing on the balcony with the wind whipping at them watching the typhoon blow in across the harbor. The old bartender and aging harlot marrying in the bar because "its not good to be alone when you're old" Hundreds of sampans sailing to the rescue like the US Cavalry. And of course I did mention Clark and Susan?

Good ingredients - shame about the script!
Susan Hayward comes to Hong-Kong, then a British Crown Colony, to search for her husband, a journalist, who entered China without a visa, and "disappeared". She meets Michael Rennie, who works for the water-guard: Hong-Kong is a den of vice, unprotected women are considered a fair game. She finds out that Clark Gable is the right man for the job, a charming smuggler with a heart of gold (he adopted three Eurasian children). In the meantime Hayward's husband stews in a chinese prison. He wanted just a picture-story for his newspaper and now his guards torture him and taunt him with the photo of his wife and the promise that she will lie in Gable's arms within a month! Hayward is taken in by an embezzler who promises to work as middleman but goes into hiding with her money. But Gable comes to her help. He bribes informers with wrist-watches, takes Rennie and his sampan (ship) hostage, finds the baddie, beats him up and rescues Hayward's husband (cruises & shootings).

And this is it, I fear. What sounds more like an expose of a film is actually the finished product. In retrospect this film seems to me like an endless succession of scenes that show Hayward being verbally abused in bars. A pity - with all those good ingredients: Gable at his most Rhett-Butlerish, Hayward at the height of her career, the scenery. Gable's scenes were shot on location, but since Hayward's ex-husband prevented her from taking her nine-year-old twin sons to Hong-Kong the film makers made use of rear-projections and a red-headed double. Gable's biographer, Warren C. Harris, wrote that Gable had a clause in his contract, that allowed him to quit at five - so that he could start drinking! He also noticed that Gable used to shake under tension, so director Edward Dmytrik (a onetime target of HUAC) cut his scenes down to three or four lines.

Tired melodrama
Jane Hoyt (Susan Hayward), a self-sacrificing, loyal wife, enlists the aid of Hank Lee (Clark Gable), a roguish gambler with a heart of gold, to find and rescue her missing husband from Communist China. Filled with stock characters (ie, the policeman who secretly admires the dashing criminal and helps him in the end, the comical drunken sailors who hate "dames") and stock situations (passions flare during a big storm). There is some nice photography, but it couldn't hold my interest.

Why no DVD?
Terrific score and Hong Hong scenery for this action film. All the dreck's on DVD, why not this excellent movie?

YOU ARE IN GOOD HAND'S, WITH THE KING.
THIS MOVIE'S PHOTOGRAPHY (HONG KONG, THE HARBOR, THE OCEAN, AND CLOSE UPS)WAS CUTTING EDGE IN 1955, AND IS STILL BREATHTAKING TODAY (WITH A GOOD VHS/TV). CLARK GABLE GIVES A GREAT PERFORMANCE AS A MAN'S MAN, READY TO HELP THE GREAT LOOKING (SUSAN HAYWARD), A STRONG LADY, SLOWLY WEAKENING TO "THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE", BUT STILL HOLDING TRUE TO HER MISSING/PRISONER (GENE BARRY)HUSBAND. MICHAEL RENNIE PLAYS THE GOOD COP, WITH A SENSE OF ADVENTURE, AND THE REST OF THE CAST ARE EVIL, HUMOROUS, LOYAL, AND ENTERTAINING, IN THIS IS, A GREAT 1950'S, COLOR MOVIE.