Affair in Trinidad
Directed by Vincent ShermanWhen Chris Emery's husband is found dead in Trinidad under circumstances that suggest suicide, the local police are not entirely convinced. Into this unresolved situation arrives Steve Emery, the dead man's brother, skeptical of the official account and openly suspicious of Chris herself. She is a nightclub performer – glamorous, composed, and carrying secrets she is not yet prepared to share. The colonial island setting, with its heat and transient population, provides cover for men who prefer their activities unexamined.
Chris is, in fact, working at the direction of British intelligence, cultivating the patronage of Max Fabian, a wealthy and well-connected figure suspected of operating a spy network with Cold War implications. Steve's arrival threatens to expose her arrangement before it yields results, and his antagonism toward her – rooted partly in grief, partly in an attraction he refuses to acknowledge – places both of them in increasing danger. Fabian is perceptive, his associate Veronica Huebling is watchful, and the circle around them is not one that tolerates loose ends.
Affair in Trinidad belongs to the cycle of postwar studio noirs that situated Cold War paranoia within the conventions of the romantic thriller. The intelligence plot gives the film a geopolitical dimension that the domestic noir rarely admitted, while the pairing of Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford – reunited nearly a decade after Gilda – invites the audience to read the tension between them as something older and more personal than the mission at hand.
