Three strangers arrive at the port of Macao on the same ship: Nick Cochran, a cynical-but-honest ex-serviceman, Julie Benson, an equally cynical, sultry night club singer, and Lawrence Trumble, a traveling salesman who deals in both silk stockings and contraband. Corrupt police lieutenant Sebastian notifies casino owner and underworld boss Vincent Halloran about the new arrivals. Halloran has been tipped off about an undercover New York City policeman out to lure him into international waters so he can be arrested. With only three strangers to choose from, Halloran assumes Nick is the cop. He tries to bribe a puzzled Nick to leave Macao, but Nick is interested in getting to know Julie better and turns him down. Halloran hires Julie as a singer, in part to find out what she knows about Nick. Later, Trumble offers Nick a commission to help him sell a stolen diamond necklace. However, when Nick shows Halloran a diamond from the necklace, Halloran recognizes it; he had sent the jewelry to Hong Kong only a week earlier to be sold. Now sure of Nick's identity, he has the American taken prisoner for later questioning. Nick is guarded by two thugs and Halloran's jealous girlfriend, Margie. Worried that Halloran is planning to dump her for Julie, Margie lets Nick escape, with the two guards close behind. When Trumble happens on the late-night chase, he tries to help Nick and is killed, mistaken by the thugs for Nick. Before he dies, he tells Nick about the police boat waiting offshore. When Nick tries to get Julie to go away with him, he learns that Halloran has invited her on a trip to Hong Kong. With this information, Nick is able to dispose of Halloran's murderous henchman, Itzumi, and take the helm of Halloran's boat. He steers for the waiting police and hands Halloran over to them.
Macao was the second feature that Josef von Sternberg filmed to fulfill a two-picture contract with RKO Pictures then owned by Howard Hughes.. Shooting began in September 1950 and was released in April 1952. Sternberg's habit of handling actors "as mere details of décor" elicited strenuous objections from stars Jane Russell and Gloria Grahame such that "the shooting of Macao has become a minor legend." John Baxter reports that "fights on the set" were not uncommon, and were manifested in the "strained" performances of the cast. During the final stages of filming, director Nicholas Ray was enlisted for perform retakes on a critical fistfight scene between Robert Mitchum and Brad Dexter, because Sternberg's handling was deemed unsatisfactory by producer Alex Gottlieb. Although uncredited, Ray's contribution to the picture was recognized by Sternberg. Sternberg, who "despised the script and the close control" by the studio "disowned" responsibility for the production. Only stock footage was shot on location in Hong Kong and Macau. T.V. actor and host Truman Bradley narrated the film's opening. Jane Russell sings the Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen song "One for My Baby ", and the Jule Styne and Leo Robin tune "You Kill Me"
Reception
The film recorded a loss of $700,000. Biographer Herman g. Weinberg called the film "a critical and box-office fiasco."
Critical response
Critic Bosley Crowther, writing for The New York Times in 1952, lambasted the characters as "flimflam" and the story "pedestrian", despite some "well-placed direction by Josef von Sternberg in a couple of scenes." Film historianAndrew Sarris in his appraisal of Sternberg's films for Museum of Modern Art, deplores Macao as a series of "visual coups" assembled "to conceal the meaninglessness of the action..." Whereas Sarris praises the majority of Sternberg's films "for their unity of form and function", Macao proves "how superficial mere style can be." Journalist and filmmaker John Baxter, writing for the International Film Guide Series, has a higher opinion of the film and lauds the "bravura passages" and the "atmosphere and décor that make the work definitively "Sternbergian". Both Sarris and Baxter acknowledge Sternberg's stylistic signature in the deadly waterfront chase amid the docked fishing boat, as well as the amusing bedroom scene where an electric fan reduces a pillow to "a storm of feathers." In 2005, film critic Dennis Schwartz, writing for Ozus' World Movie Reviews, lauded the casting of Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum: Baxter laments that Macao, though "not a classic work... ill-deserves its present obscurity."
