Sea Wife
Starring: Richard Burton, Joan Collins, Basil Sydney
Director: Bob McNaught
The film: A curiously engaging film despite its faults, Sea Wife was originally to have been directed by Roberto Rossellini, but the screenplay (adapted from J.M. Scott's novel Sea-Wyf and Biscuit) that he brought to the project was considered too steamy by 20th Century Fox. Instead, the film's production designer, Bob McNaught, took the reins, and while the results are interesting, the gap left by the Italian's departure is quite noticeable.
An early vehicle for rising British stars Richard Burton and Joan Collins, Sea Wife begins with a series of cryptic notices left in the personal columns of the London newspapers by someone called 'Biscuit', who is in search of 'Sea Wife'. Eventually, Biscuit (Burton, right with Collins) is invited by a mystery third party to a meeting, which leads to a flashback to the evacuation of Singapore in 1942.
A merchant ship heading leaving for India is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, after which Burton and Collins find themselves getting acquainted on a rubber dinghy in the company of a boorish businessman and the ship's West Indian purser.
