Istanbul ** (1957, Errol Flynn, Cornell Borchers, John Bentley, Torin Thatcher, Leif Erickson, Martin Benson, Peggy Knudsen) – Classic Movie Review 7271

Director Joseph Pevney’s 1957 romantic espionage adventure crime drama Istanbul is a rehash of 1947’s Singapore, this time (obviously) relocated to Istanbul and starring Errol Flynn as pilot adventurer James Brennan deported for diamond smuggling but returning to Istanbul to uncover a valuable bracelet he has hidden in his hotel, only to find that he is pursued by smugglers and greedy customs officials.

That is the crime and adventure, and then as well as that there is a romantic subplot involving Cornell Borchers as the mind-lost amnesiac Stephanie Bauer, supposedly Flynn’s supposedly ‘dead’ lover.

Pevney’s routine foreign intrigue movie botches what was not much of a yarn in the first place, although there is a useful cast and Flynn tries hard to fill his character out and make it work, though unfortunately Borchers fails in both departments, but then her character and dialogue are not well written. It helps that cinematographer William Daniels shoots in CinemaScope and Technicolor on Turkish locations.

Nat King Cole is an asset, singing ‘I Was a Little Too Lonely’ and ‘When I Fall in Love’ (by Victor Young). Also in the cast are John Bentley, Torin Thatcher, Leif Erickson, Martin Benson, Peggy Knudsen, Werner Klemperer, Vladimir Sokoloff, Ted Hecht, David Bond and Roland Varno.

After one more film, Flood Tide (1958), Universal refused to renew Lithuanian-born Borchers’s contract and she returned to Germany, quit acting in 1959, and devoting herself to family life.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7271

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