Seven Sinners isn't just more of a Dietrich movie because she's the star and he's her co-star. It's also the first movie the actress made after her big resurgence in popularity from the previous year's Destry Rides Again, and Seven Sinners' success lies in its ability to recapture the lusty, rowdy flavor of her earlier hit. Again, Dietrich is very appealing and very fetching as a chanteuse whose naughty habits usually leave a black-and-blue trail behind her and, again, her character wreaks havoc in an exotic location (the South Pacific replacing the Wild West). As she purrs at one point, "I make rough seas. I set the jungle on fire. I'm a bad influence." We see that in the movie's opening, in which the brawling customers at the club where Dietrich's Bijou is singing tear up the joint, leading to arrests and the latest deportation of Bijou and her pals Finnegan (Broderick Crawford), her self-appointed bodyguard, and Sasha (Mischa Auer), a loyal magician/kleptomaniac. After scouring the map for a nearby island that isn't off-limits to them, the three end up on Boni-Komba, where a recent change in governor means they can return to the club that gives the movie its name. It turns out the forever-flustered owner (Billy Gilbert) has finally gotten the place fixed up after Bijou's last destructive stint there.
Like such top-shelf Dietrich movies as The Blue Angel and Morocco, Seven Sinners blends the heroine's world-weary, devil-may-care songs with offstage romantic concerns. Here's where such songs as "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby" and "The Man's in the Navy" come in, as does Wayne. The American fleet is in town when Bijou returns to Boni-Komba and, after heading to the club to chew out the younger officers who've fled the governor's party to watch her, Wayne's lieutenant becomes smitten, too. While Bijou toys with most men, she's more serious around the lieutenant, who soon starts butting heads with Antro (Oscar Homolka), a knife-wielding former partner-in-crime who wants Bijou back. Although I wouldn't call this an especially memorable Wayne performance, a year after Stagecoach he exudes a big-lug charm that works here. It's the same big-lug charm that famously had Dietrich whispering "Daddy, buy me that" to director Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cause for Alarm) when he brought Wayne to the Universal commissary for Dietrich to check out before casting him.
The songs, romance and very funny performances of Gilbert (in one of the consummate character actor's best roles), Auer (playing another reprobate, as in Destry), Crawford (who knew he could be funny?) and Vince Barnett (as the club's bartender) give Seven Sinners a real comic energy. But all this is really a build-up to the main event: one of the best barroom brawls ever put on screen. When it's time for nefarious Antro and the big-shouldered American lieutenant to finally square off, with their respective reinforcements behind them, bodies fly, tables collapse when landed upon and punches thwack as in few other cinematic dust-ups. It's like watching a glorious game of human pinball full of insane stunt work. Like the fighters in that climax, Seven Sinners is the sort of comedy that has its sleeves rolled up and sports a scrappy style, like such other contemporaries as The Great McGinty or Roxie Hart. It may have been fashioned as a Destry Rides Again knock-off, but it succeeds as heartily as its predecessor does. And since Dietrich worked much less frequently in movies after 1942, it's also the last great movie from her heyday as a prolific studio contract star.
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by Paul Sherman
