Swing My Swing High, My Darling

Swing My Swing High, My Darling is very freely based on the frequently (and powerfully) filmed story The Postman Always Rings Twice, the indestructible novel by James M. Cain. So Hajisaari is competing with Tay Garnett and Bob Rafelson, while his actor Eman Manan takes on John Garfield and Jack Nicholson and his actress Betty Banafe must reckon with Lana Turner and Jessica Lange. And they don’t do all that badly, either. It’s not very likely that Eman Manan will get an Oscar, but his surly, subtle aggression and his almost animal sensuality carry the film. Even more than the all-too-well-known Hollywood actors, he gives the role the necessary unpredictability. A pathological quality that is used by Hajisaari with subtlety and yet without reserve. The story is well-known, so just a reminder… A stranger drops in one day at a café run by an older man and his beautiful young wife – perhaps too beautiful and young for the stranger’s own good. From the first shot, the tragedy is inevitable. The countryside of Islamic Malaysia offers the right sultry atmosphere and we should thank the censors (just this once) for guaranteeing that the erotic tension remains exciting. Hajisaari had to be just as inventive as old Hollywood in the days of the Hays Code. The strange title is borrowed from a Malay lullaby. (GjZ)