Review of Strange Cargo (1940) by William D — 19 Jan 2012

Frank Borzage's "Strange Cargo" has to be one of the most strikingly religious films to ever pass through the studio system. The character of Cambreau (played beautifully by Ian Hunter) is something very different from the easy wish-fulfillment angels of Henry Travers in "It's a Wonderful Life" or Cary Grant in "The Bishop's Wife"; rather than fall back on that sort of feel-good ecumenicism, "Strange Cargo" opts for hard theology.

Here is a Christ figure who doesn't fix the characters' problems--instead he asks them to come unto him by turning inward to find their own solutions, and to find the gods within themselves. We are our own saviors, and, more importantly, we are each others' saviors--we know God because we know the Good in our fellow man.

It's the sort of heady, real redemption that most Hollywood pictures wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, and here it's wrapped up in a tremendously entertaining romance with Joan Crawford and escaped convict Clark Gable, complete with fisticuffs, a greasy Peter Lorre, and adventure on the high sea.

It's a grand, glorious concoction, the sort of strange art film that occasionally finds its way through the cogs of mainstream American filmmaking, and it's a rich, rewarding, exciting, and beautiful piece of work.