To the Ends of the Earth (film)
| To the Ends of the Earth | |
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| Directed by | Robert Stevenson |
| Produced by | Sidney Buchman |
| Screenplay by |
Jay Richard Kennedy Sidney Buchman (uncredited) |
| Story by | Jay Richard Kennedy |
| Starring | Dick Powell Signe Hasso |
| Music by | George Duning |
| Cinematography | Burnett Guffey |
| Edited by | William A. Lyon |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.7 million (US rentals) |
To the Ends of the Earth is a 1948 American crime film noir directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Sidney Buchman and Jay Richard Kennedy. The drama features Dick Powell, Signe Hasso, and others.
In 1935, United States Narcotics Agent Michael Barrows (Powell) is assigned to find an unidentified freighter suspected of smuggling drugs. When he and the Coast Guard spot it along the California coast, they give chase. Barrows watches helplessly through binoculars as the freighter captain has about a hundred chained slave laborers thrown overboard to drown. The ship escapes by passing beyond the 12 mile limit and entering international waters. Horrified by what he has seen, Barrows determines to smash the narcotics ring - traveling "to the ends of the Earth" if need be - without first clearing it with his boss, Commissioner H. J. Anslinger (played by the real Harry J. Anslinger).
The trail leads him to Shanghai where his Chinese counterpart, Commissioner Lum Chi Chow (Vladimir Sokoloff), has obtained information from a dying man. The man had escaped from a slave labor gang growing poppies somewhere in Egypt. Lum Chi Chow believes that once the poppies are harvested within the next few days, they will be smuggled into Shanghai for final processing. Suspicion falls on Nicholas Sokim (Ludwig Donath), as he has a criminal record, but he claims to have been out of the drug business for many years. During his investigation, Barrows meets recent widow Ann Grant (Signe Hasso), who is preparing to send orphan Chinese teenager Shu Pan Wu (Maylia) to the safety of the United States. When a drug processing lab is discovered beneath Sokim's business, Sokim commits suicide.
With time running out, and the trail going cold, Barrows travels to Egypt to search for the hidden poppy fields. There, he teams up with British Commissioner Lionel Hadley (an uncredited Vernon Steele) and French Commissioner Lariesier (Marcel Journet). They managed to locate the poppy fields on land belonging to Binda Sha (Fritz Leiber). Barrows is disturbed to learn that the irrigation system for the fields was set up by Ann Grant's late engineer husband. When Binda Sha realizes he has been caught, he throws himself off a cliff to his death.
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