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!
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!