Code-Crack Race In Wartime

Pacific Rendezvous (1942) Instructs On Spy-Trapping

Wartime de-coding from MGM ration book. This has interest as George Sidney's second directorial go at features, so there's energy at least, but Lee Bowman wouldn't fill shoes of departing warriors Clark Gable or Robert Taylor, yet who was left for manly Metro duty once these two donned uniform? Enemy agents make but cursory effort to conceal themselves; if espionage were this easy, our side was in real trouble, a surely unintended message Pacific Rendezvous puts across. Jean Rogers is more hindrance-than-help to Bowman, her gal Friday a grate whatever looks of an actress playing it. She was another of those that might have made the grade given better material, which Pacific Rendezvous isn't. Cracking of codes is explained in simplest terms, which makes me wonder how challenging real ones were. One messy bit has night clubbers dipping a watch band into water to reveal secret Allied plans, a cumbersome device to risk stain of tablecloths plus alarm to wait staff. Seen on TCM.