Film noir in Malaya

The letter 1940

After hearing about Betty Davis and her eyes in Kim Carnes' song since the 80s, I finally got the chance to see a full length feature film with Davis as the leading star. The movie is set in a pre-Independence Singapore where the colonial masters were calling the shots and the humble natives were just humble servants. Well, the servants had the last say at the end of movie.
From the outset, we can make out that the whole setting is staged. There were not anywhere near the Far East but all the coconut trees did the trick.
It was a bright moonlight lit night at a time when the weary bodied natives were resting after a long day's work on their hammocks in the compound of the Crosbies' bungalow when the sound of multiple gun shots pierced the tranquility of the night.
A man stumbles out of the main door of the bungalow, obviously after being shot at and falls over the stairs. A lady follows him and empties the contents of her gun repeatedly till it runs out of bullets. The head butler recognizes the as Mr Hammond.

The shooter, Leslie Crosbie (Betty Davis), summons him to contact her husband, Robert, who was working in another plantation. In the next scene, Robert, a British police inspector and Stacey, a family friend and an attorney sympathetically try to obtain the history of the chain of events that transpired.

Bette Davis

Leslie coolly narrates how an old friend of the family, Hammond, made an unannounced surprise visit at night after a few drinks and started passing ungentlemanly remarks. When he forced himself upon her, she shot him to protect herself.

The closely knitted British community there are all sympathetic to her plight and are out to support her. Stacey acts as her defense lawyer. In the course of preparation of her case, Stacey's assistant, a local native, who has made big as a attorney himself, approaches him with a discriminating letter. The letter allegedly was written by Leslie inviting Hammond to come over as her husband was out of post. In reply, Leslie confided that she did write to him to help her buy a gun as a birthday present for her husband.
As the evidence could incriminate Leslie, the letter which was now in Hammond's wife's (a hateful evil looking native girl), is retrieved for a token of $10,000.
The case goes on and Leslie is acquitted and everybody is happy. That is when the real drama starts. Robert thinks that he had enough of Singapore and wants to start life new in a new plantation in Sumatra. When he realizes that his life savings had been used for the purpose of the letter, Leslie finally tells him the whole truth. Leslie, a bored housewife, who was always left to herself by her busy plantation manager husband, started a love affair with Hammond. It had gone on for some time till she heard news of his marriage to a local girl. During the last rendezvous, he wanted to end the affair but she was too deeply rooted to let go, ended his life instead.
The Crosbies initially decide to forgive and forget but then realized that the past kept on haunting them. on one tropical night, Leslie walks out of her safe haven and is fatally stabbed by the scornful widow of Hammond conspired by the head butler. The end.
Another film noir, this time set in the pre-Independent Malaya. Just like John Garfield and Robert Mitchum whose appearance makes them perfectly cut for film noir, Betty Davies with her expressive eyes and eyelids makes her the perfect female counterpart for this role.An interesting thing that I noted in the movie is that only one sentence was uttered in Malay (apa buat uncle?). During the rest of the film, the natives were speaking Cantonese (not native to Singapore) and murmurs of a incomprehensible gibberish language.