Review of Rope of Sand

After a row of the most subtle and sensitive love films ever made in Hollywood, William Dieterle resorted to this brutal and primitive drama of greed in the deserts of Kalahari. The actors are all superb (except Corinne Calvet, who is a failure and never even convincing as such,) but the script is lacking in any human credibility. Such an eloquent actor as Paul Henreid is made to play a sadistic villain without any human nuances, and Burt Lancaster is mostly used to apply his knuckles. The only good performance is Claude Rains, whose relevant cynicism in this dreadful study in greed is all too convincing. Sam Jaffe and Peter Lorre add some sympathy by their decadent characters but not much and far from enough to make this film interesting in any other way than photographically. Only Franz Waxman's fantastic music makes it endurable at all. Sorry about that, Mr Dieterle. Your previous masterpieces made us expect more of you than this sordid B-melodrama.