Moviecut—Rope of Sand

source: Rope of Sand

I believe and agree with Burt Lancaster about this film; I hated it as well. I am a big Burt Lancaster fan and this was the worst and most unauthentic character he ever played on screen. Adding to this mess was an actress who was completely unappealing in both character an appearance. I call her Queen Bee. In this film, Burt would have been called KT (which would stand for King of Testosterone). At least Peter Lorre and Sam Jaffe stayed within their personas. But to fall for Queen STD, one really has to suspend disbelief. Claude Rains is delicious as the conniving diamond exec, and Paul Heinreid is thoroughly convincing as a slimy storm trooper in charge of policing the mine. But all three of these men falling for Queen STD? What a Hollywood fantasy. Not a chance. In real life, Paul would have had Burt shot in the first ten minutes; lol.. And NONE of them would have fallen for that phony femme fatale.

Rope of Sand suffers from a surfeit of additional dialogue. The scenes are often so verbose, Dieterle has to break them up, giving them some sort of pace by filming in very short takes from a large variety of camera angles, as in the card game sequence. On occasion he combines these effects with unobtrusive camera movement. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. There's just too much dialogue to overcome. The movie is all but buried under its weight. Still, some of the players do manage to come across effectively, particularly Claude Rains as a Machiavellian mining magnate and lovely Corinne Calvet, making an impressive Hollywood debut as the seductive Suzanne. (Although she receives "introducing" billing, she had in fact already appeared in three French films. Her husband John Bromfield has three small but important scenes as a tempted guard). Lancaster is somewhat stiff as the hero, but Henreid plays the sadistic commandant with unaccustomed gusto. On the other hand, Peter Lorre's part seems to have been conceived as an afterthought. Though mumbling his way through several scenes, he has really very little to do, his one big scene - an account of Lancaster's misfortunes - being made completely redundant by its repetition in a more vital flashback form later on in the picture... In the censored print under review, there's no climactic fight between Lancaster and Henreid at all. The former simply pushes his opponent out of the jeep, thus destroying the whole point of the film and denying the audience the all-action climax that all the elaborate groundwork has led us to expect. Instead we have a rather tame confrontation scene with Rains repeating the kind of ambivalent characterization that made him so unforgettable in Casablanca. (He has some typically bitter sarcastic humor too, which he delivers with his usual relish). Despite his prominence in the billing, Mike Mazurki has only a small bit. But Kenny Washington impresses, whilst Sam Jaffe plies his somewhat stereotyped stethoscope with his customary reliability. As expected, producer Wallis has dressed up this re-union with first-class production values, including Lang's moodily atmospheric black-and-white lighting, striking art direction and attractive costumes.

A man (Burt Lancaster) abused by a sadistic mining company cop (Paul Henreid) before he could tell where on their desert property he had found diamonds decides to steal them instead. Glenn Erickson reflected on the background of the film and how it was received when first released, "Although William Dieterle's direction is capable, the script works too hard to introduce an overly familiar collection of stock thriller types ... Critics generally liked Lancaster's performance, even if they slighted the work of Claude Rains and Peter Lorre and saved the bulk of their praise for Paul Henried's nasty villain." Indeed, those who watch the film for Lorre may be disappointed on little screen time he receives. Reflecting decades later, Burt Lancaster singled this out as his least favorite film. That was due to personal reasons, however, so may not necessarily reflect whether this was (in his opinion) his worst performance.

It is set in Africa and includes three cast members from "Casablanca," but it is a far cry from that classic. The main problem is the lousy script, a muddled plot about hidden gold in the desert. It's quite talky for an adventure film and most of the dialog is boring and does nothing to help the narrative flow. What little action there is is clumsily choreographed. Lancaster and Henreid ham it up. Lorre plays a vague character who talks a lot but says nothing. Rains comes off best. Calvet makes an unimpressive American film debut as the love interest. Not only can she not act, she has an annoying voice that sounds like a whiny space alien.

Rope of Sand – 1949 I watched this one last night for the first time in more than twenty years. The last time I was not really "noir aware" so I took the whole thing as a lightweight action adventure. Boy was I wrong! This is a very dark noir with plenty of top noir talent involved. The film's location is a small town in the South African desert. The town is on the edge of a vast diamond country and is ran by the local diamond cartel. Lancaster plays a man with a problem. The problem? He knows where a small cache of diamonds are hidden. They are however inside the cartel's territory and the security tends to shoot first and see who they shot later. A further complication for Lancaster is that the head of the security forces, Paul Henreid, would like a "friendly word" or two. Henreid it seems knows about the diamonds and wants them for himself. Claude Rains plays Henreid's superior who is also in the running for the diamonds. Corinne Calvet plays a tart who makes a living by preying on wealthy men. She stages phony rapes and then blackmails the men for a healthy sum. She tries the gag on Rains who brushes her off but hires her to put the moves on Lancaster. We also have Peter Lorre wandering through doing a take on his Casablanca role. Here he is attempting to buy diamonds instead of selling letters of transit. Everyone seems in on the secret and they are all doing their best to apply a knife to someone else's back. Rains and Henreid really shine here with Henreid in particular standing out. The man makes a first rate villain! Calvet is OK but Liz Scott would have been perfect imo. The standard noir urban surroundings are discarded and replaced by the bleakness of the empty desert. This works quite well in giving the film a real sense of hopelessness. The impressive cast includes Burt Lancaster, Paul Henried, Claude Rains, Sam Jaffe, Nestor Paiva , Mike Mazurki, Peter Lorre and Corinne Calvet . The film was directed by William Dieterle who did such films as The Turning Point, Dark City and The Accused. Producing the film was Hal B. Wallis whose noirs are too many to list. The director of photography was Charles Lang Jr. Lang shot Desert Fury, Sudden Fear, The Big Heat, Man From Laramie, Female on the Beach and Ace in the Hole. Music is by Franz Waxman who scored Sunset Blvd, Rear Window, Dark Passage and He Ran all the Way among others. For a film with all this talent involved it does not get much press. I quite enjoyed it!

Hal B. Wallis production for Paramount, reuniting Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Peter Lorre from the supporting cast of Wallis' "Casablanca" in 1942, involves Burt Lancaster as an American hunting guide in South West Africa refusing to reveal the location of a cache of diamonds in a restricted area known as the Rope of Sand. Security chief Henreid is the hissable nasty who threatens Lancaster, Rains is the owner of the diamond company who hopes a French woman can seduce Burt into revealing all, while Lorre is a scroungy merchant who knows everyone's business. Limp action-drama with funereal pacing, an annoying femme fatale (Corinne Calvet, a Wallis discovery, in her first major role) and a sour leading man in unhappy spirits. ** from ****

I'm glad that I am not the only one who intensely dislikes Corrine Calvet in this movie. ;-) Unfortunately I have never seen the original English version. I only know the German dubbed one. But I doubt that Mrs. Calvet's voice could be any worse then her German voice which is absolutely terrible. I really like this movie but as Anne Sharp already wrote Mrs. Calvet makes it difficult to enjoy. Also I noticed two few mistakes: 1. In the beginning sequence you see a large "warning" sign in three languages, Dutch, English and German. The German translation should have obviously been "Warnung, Sperrgebiet!" but on the sign it says "Sperroit". 2. When Davis wakes up and finds that Ingrim has gone the horse you see is clearly a different one then the one he rides on in the next scene.

I rate this movie pretty highly and then I wonder, were Hollywood movies in the late 40s generally this good, in which case I'll have to see a lot more. "Rope of Sand" is so well made--the story clicks along, every shot is perfectly placed and serves the story, both day and night scenes in a desert are grandly photographed. The interiors are more elaborate than one might imagine, but Edith Head's costumes for Ms. Calvet guarantee that her character is irresistibly sexy. The cast has been gathered from across Europe and beyond--OK, some of them more difficult to follow than others--the supremely skilled actor, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre doing his elegant lowlife, Marais and Miranda singing in a nightclub. And of course young Burt Lancaster, both beautiful and doing the turns of his character. Credit then too to Paul Henreid, holding his own in a fight scene with Lancaster. And there's even a willingness to define South Africa by its racism, from the opening scene of a Black man being chased by converging trucks in the desert. I won't underline an inference about political economy.