Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

sports7272 Many reviewers have compared this film with "Gilda",the same stars,similar plot,but there the similarity ends.It's really just a sad parody of "Gilda".The reviews are far more entertaining than the film.One reviewer praised Rita Hayworth's singing and dancing.It's a pity they couldn't have dubbed her dancing as well.Her body was described as "athletic".I would have said flabby and well corseted.Another reviewer said the Nazis didn't take Paris???I don't consider "Gilda" a great film but Rita Hayworth is incandescent,one of the most watchable performances of all time.How could a woman so beautiful have aged so badly in 6 years? She was only 33,but looked well into her 40s.One year later as Sadie Thompson she could have been in her 50s!There was only one star in this show and that was Jean Louis.Don't ask who she was.

gridoon2018 This Rita Hayworth - Glenn Ford pairing may not be the classic that "Gilda" became, or quite as exotic as the title implies, but it's a pretty neat little mystery on its own. Though the supporting cast - the suavely villainous Alexander Scourby, the quirky Valerie Bettis, the comic-relief Steven Geray, etc. - is interesting enough, it's largely up to the two main stars to carry the movie. Rita Hayworth gives a low-key performance for the most part, but she also explodes in two wonderful song-and-dance numbers (one thing I noticed here is that her body was quite athletic by that era's standards). Ford's rugged masculinity is somehow a perfect counterpart to Hayworth's sensuality - they make a good pair. The film gets quite tense in the second half, when Rita goes on what is essentially a spy mission, but the ending is pretty rushed - and Rita's dangerous work does not really get rewarded since the police find the evidence they were looking for to get the bad guy from another source! But for fans of the two leads, "Affair In Trinidad" is still a must-see. *** out of 4.

Terrell-4 Affair in Trinidad might have been a reasonably solid movie of murder and intrigue if Columbia Pictures hadn't strained so mightily to remind us of, and cash in on, Gilda. But six years have passed since that hothouse orchid bloomed. Rita Hayworth, returning to movies after four years, a survivor of two demeaning marriages, first to the ego-driven and easily bored Orson Welles and the second to the spoiled, world-class philanderer Aly Khan, looks great but no longer has that fresh, spirited quality she brought to her movies in the Forties. Glenn Ford is finally beginning to look older than a teen-ager, but all he's called on to do is to project the same melodramatic resentment he carried along with him in Gilda. For the villain, Alexander Scourby was a good actor, but there's none of the noxious, smooth danger that George Macready gave off in waves...and none of the homoerotic subtext that spiced up Gilda. All we have is Inspector Smythe's flat-footed description of Max Fabian: "He's a man who deals in international intrigue, secret information, treason...a man who's grown rich by exploiting trouble and unrest wherever they exist..." Yawn. Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth) is a headlining entertainer in Trinidad's Carib Club. She sings, dances, and knocks 'em dead when she undulates across the dance floor. Her husband, an unsuccessful painter, dies. Suicide? It looks that way, but Inspector Smythe (Torin Thatcher) is convinced it's murder. Smythe believes that Max Fabian was behind it. He arms twists Chris to get close to Fabian, who likes her a lot. Her job: Get the goods on him. This will include slimy men with German accents and devices that seem to be nuclear. During the last ten minutes we'll forget Gilda and remember Notorious. But then her husband's brother shows up from the States. Steve Emery (Glenn Ford) quickly resents how Chris is being so friendly to Max. He has no idea she's working for the police and that she has been instructed to say nothing. This three-way arrangement results in Steve showing how tough and angry he can be, in Fabian showing how cool and dangerous he can be, and in Chris showing how conflicted she can be, especially when Chris and Steve realize their love for each other. Fear not; the movie does eventually end. When Affair in Trinidad was released it was considerably more successful than Gilda had been. Affair in Trinidad hasn't aged well. The script is no better than workmanlike. The acting, especially in the smaller parts, is basic. Even the two musical numbers Hayworth gives us, "Trinidad Lady" and "I've Been Kissed Before," seem like stuffed animals from another era. Instead of the self-aware and amusing heat of Hayworth doing "Put the Blame on Mame," here Hayworth is gorgeous and merely professional. Most of the problem is that the choreography for her is vulgar instead of being sexy. Picture a small group of bongo-thumping Trinidadians in native dress sitting on stage amongst banana fronds. They sing, eyes rolling with delight... "A chicky chick boom chick boom / A chicky chick boom chick boom / Announces you're in the room / With the Trinidad Lady "A chicky chick boom chick boom / A chicky chick boom chick boom / Your ticker goes boom, boom, boom / For the Trinidad Lady..." Even Hayworth swaying in on bare feet can't do much with material like this. Same with the movie.

LouE15 Chris (Rita Hayworth, in a return to the silver screen after years away), a beautiful dancer in a seedy Trinidad club, is forced to play the spy in a game between men, "Notorious"–style, after her husband is murdered. In a new and awkward twist, her brother in law Steve (the wonderful Glenn Ford) turns up, with questions that her compromised position makes it hard to answer. A plot is uncovered, shady dealings, a love triangle, and a noirish feel to the thing. Moustache-twirling is decently covered by Alexander Scourby.This isn't the finest ever moment for anyone involved, but it's quite poignant and interesting to look at. The reuniting of Hayworth with her "Gilda" co-star Ford hasn't quite the spark and bite of their earlier venture, and her face records the slight battering she's taken from life in the interim. This is all to the good for her character – but it isn't quite synchronised; not everything she says is convincing, and sometimes her face is too much of a mask. But her dancing is as vibrant and engaging as ever, and the chemistry between her and Ford is there, thank goodness. Otherwise it would be a shame for Ford's talent and effort to be thrown away on a film that didn't deserve it.Glenn Ford's Steve epitomises the strong man in trouble, his handsome face by turns boyish, petulant, lovestruck, brooding, aggressive. I love the way he walks into a room, shoulders first, defiantly always a man, determined to tread the straight path. When he confronts Chris at Max's birthday party, weighted under by dark jealousy, suspicion, baffled love and grief, his carefully constructed masculinity seems to me almost to tremble on the brink of collapse."Affair in Trinidad" has strong visual moments standing out from a slightly silly plot: the wonderfully murky, expressionist shot of Chris smoking in the thick dark of her doorway, her face just dimly lit by the cigarette she pulls on; the way Steve looks at Max and Chris at the point of their first meeting together; Steve slapping the cringing bar owner across the face with a wad of dollars; Chris in her big scene, downing a glass of champagne, then flouncing over to start up the orchestra and dance, in a desperate bid to give both Max and Steve the message they need to hear. The film is finally less than the sum of its parts – but enjoyable all the same.