The Road to Singapore is a 1931 film directed by Alfred E. Green.
The setting is The Raj, aka India under British rule. Two Brits are arriving in India on a steamship. One is Phillipa "Phil" Crosby, a lovely young woman who is coming to India to marry her fiancee, a medical doctor named George Marsh (Louis Calhern). The other is Hugh Dawltrey (William Powell), an ex-pat and a cad who seems to have a preference for seducing married women.
Phillipa finds Hugh charming but resists his attentions on the voyage. She gets to India and marries George, only to find that he is dull, fussy, and apparently completely uninterested in sex with her. An increasingly lonely and horny Phillipa finds herself drawn to Hugh. Meanwhile, there's a complicating factor in the person of George's beautiful younger sister Rene, who is also horny and also attracted to Hugh.
No connection to Road to Singapore, the first film in the Hope-Crosby "Road to ..." series.
Tropes:
- All Women Are Lustful: Rene is clear and unambiguous about wanting to get laid, although Hugh prefers Phillipa. Phillipa for her part would be fine with sex with her husband, but when George shows no interest at all in sleeping with her, she goes to Hugh.
- Artistic License – Geography: The setting is a town called Khota which, apparently, is a seaport. The actual Khota is well inland, north of Delhi and near what's now the Afghan border.
- Epic Tracking Shot: A shot has Phillipa in her bedroom, looking out the window, all lonely and horny as the Jungle Drums of the native wedding ceremony play. The camera pulls back and then, after a disguised cut to a model, pulls farther and farther and farther back across the clearing (the model), until after another disguised cut it stops at Hugh's house, where he's staring across the way at her. This is followed by cuts to her face and back to his, before a Sexy Discretion Shot to the next morning finds Phillipa not in her house (she's at Hugh's getting laid).
- Establishing Character Moment:
- Before he even appears, for Hugh. The first scene establishes that his house has been seized, and the second establishes that he's been expelled from the Gymkhana Club for seducing the wives of other members, and that before leaving he said "This club is an old ladies' home."
- Rene is first shown reading a book called "The Hungry Wife", and looking excited as she hears the stuffy old men in the club talk about what a cad and seducer Hugh is.
- George is established as an asshole when his servant says that he missed Phillipa at the dock, and George yells "Don't lie to me you stinking heathen rat!", and hits him.
- Exotic Backdrop Setting: The setting is British India, but that has little to do with the plot other than the climate being hot and humid, which just makes Phillipa hornier.
- Heat Wave: It's hot all the time in India. Dialogue explicitly states that the heat makes women more lustful, with a character saying "This heat is bad enough on married women" but that it's even worse for turning single girls like Rene all slutty.
- Idle Rich: Seemingly all of them, ironically except for George, who is a doctor. Hugh lounges around his house all day, all of the other colonists lounge around at the club, and Phillipa declines George's offer to work with him as a nurse, preferring to stay at home and be a wife, and eventually cheat on him with Hugh.
- Ironic Juxtaposition: Phillipa, alone and frustrated in her single bed, looks over at George's single bed. Then she looks out the window and sees two birds canoodling in a nest. Then the birds sing, accompanied by George gargling and spitting as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom.
- It's All About Me: When George's cancer patient dies aboard ship, George is upset—because now no one will see him treating the unusual tumor. More seriously, at the end this is why George is really upset when Phillipa says she's leaving him.George: But what will people say? My name, my reputation?
- Jungle Drums: Instead of a signal that The Natives Are Restless like how this trope is often used, here it's a sign that they're all getting laid. Hugh asks his servant and is told that the drums are part of a ceremony where the local young men are picking brides and, presumably, having a lot of sex. The drums keep both him and Phillipa up and apparently lead to them having sex with each other.
- Ladykiller in Love: Hugh seems to surprise himself by realizing that he's actually in love with Phillipa.
- Lingerie Scene: Some pre-Code fanservice has Rene wearing nothing but a slip and stockings, and Phillipa wearing not much more (basically a slip and a wrap) as they're changing clothes for Rene's birthday party.
- Maybe Ever After: The film ends with Phillipa leaving her husband, and going off to Singapore alone—but Hugh, who has fallen in love with her, follows.
- Reset Button: In-Universe, apparently. The opening scenes clearly establish that Hugh's plantation has been seized for failure to pay taxes, and that he has been kicked out of the Gymkhana Club for sleeping with other men's wives (and being the third party in a messy divorce case). Yet once he gets back Hugh moves into his house (did he pay the taxes after all?), and, even more inexplicably, starts hanging out at the Gymkhana Club again.
- Running Gag: Two Upper Class Twits, Simy and Reggie, are continually wandering through scenes having pointless arguments.
- Sexless Marriage: George has no desire for sex with Phillipa, which eventually drives her into Hugh's arms. (Why he got married in the first place is never explained.)
- Sexy Backless Outfit: Phillipa is wearing one on the boat when Hugh is trying to coax her out of her stateroom, and another for the party where Hugh dances with her. She wears still a third for a big love scene with Hugh towards the end.
- Sleeping Single: Rene, who both dislikes her brother and knows exactly what's up with him, gives George a meaningful look when she says she had "twin beds" put in his house. As the Sleeping Single trope wasn't enforced in The Pre-Code Era, here it's a way to show that George and Phillipa aren't having any sex.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Phillipa cheats on her sexless, self-centered, mean-spirited husband with Hugh, who is charming and courtly and who develops real feelings for her. Films made after the pre-Code era probably wouldn't have had a story like this and if they did would have had Phillipa punished for her adultery, while in this film it's liberating, as she winds up leaving her husband and heading off to Singapore.
- The Tease: George's little sister Rene, who spends the whole movie making suggestive comments at Hugh and displaying every mating signal there is, right down to touching his belt buckle. Hugh isn't interested, so he calls her bluff, picking her up and heading to his bedroom—and she screams in panic and runs off.
- Thunder Equals Downpour: One clap of thunder and a shot of a lightning bolt and immediately there's a torrential rain at the dock. This enables Hugh, who has an umbrella (and has sent all the other rickshaws away) to talk Phillipa into riding in his rickshaw.
