Seven Sinners (1940)

After she's been deported yet again from another South Pacific island, a notorious cabaret singer (Marlene Dietrich) finds romance with a young Navy Lieutenant (John Wayne) on her newest island. But the Navy frowns on their romance. Can their true love survive it? Directed by Tay Garnett (POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE), this potboiler is a pastiche of several other Dietrich vehicles, only this time set in the South Pacific instead of Morocco or the American West. Dietrich even dons a Navy officer's uniform to sing in instead of the man's tuxedo she sang in in MOROCCO. If you're a Dietrich fan, that should be enough to get you through the movie. She's actually quite appealing here (and I'm not a big Dietrich fan). I could have done without the big bar brawl near the end of the movie that seems to go on forever and which I found tiresome. I did like how they ended the movie in a way that I wasn't expecting. Not a happy ending but not a downer ending either. Remade in 1950 as SOUTH SEA SINNER with Shelley Winters in Dietrich's role. With Broderick Crawford, Oscar Homolka, Anna Lee, Mischa Auer, Albert Dekker and Billy Gilbert.