Anne of the Indies

By VARIETY STAFF

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20th Century-Fox. Director Jacques Tourneur; Producer George Jessel; Writer Philip Dunne, Arthur Caesar; Camera Harry Jackson Editor Robert Fritch; Music Franz Waxman Art Lyle Wheeler, Albert Hogsett
 
Jean Peters
Louis Jourdan
Debra Paget
Herbert Marshall
Thomas Gomez
James Robertson Justice
 

As the femme pirate who sailed the Caribbean seas as the dreaded Captain Providence, Jean Peters outdoes the best Ruth Roland tradition and looks good while doing it. There's nothing ludicrous about her performance in the type of action usually handed to males.

The film plays along at an imaginative pace under Jacques Tourneur's direction. Sea battles are expertly staged to make the most of such actionful moments.

Plot [from a story by Herbert Ravenal Sass] finds Louis Jourdan, a French naval officer whose ship and wife are being held by the British, volunteering to capture Captain Providence. He manages to get aboard her pirate vessel, takes advantage of a natural attraction that springs up to trick her with a phoney treasure map, thus leading her into a British ambush. However, Anne escapes the trap and takes her vengance by kidnapping the wife, played by Debra Paget.

Jourdan supplies a good hero and Thomas Gomez a colorful Blackbeard. Herbert Marshall, as a rum-sodden doctor aboard the pirate ship, James Robertson Justice, buccaneer first-mate, and the lineup of cut-throat characters all come over excellently.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1951. Running time: 81 MIN.