Der goldene Salamander

Trevor Howard plays David Redfern, an archaeologist sent to Tunis to recover artifacts belonging to his English employer. However, he runs across a gun running operation headed up by Serafis (Walter Rilla). The suspense builds and a murder only adds to the danger for Redfern.

Herbert Lom is absolutely wonderful as the evil, dangerous henchman, Rankl, and Anouk Aimee is beautiful as Anna. A good movie is always characterised by the strength of its supporting cast and even those people with minor parts (such as Wilfrid Hyde-White) add depth and colour to the film.

The only negative for me was the fact that Trevor Howard and Anouk Aimee make an extremely unlikely romantic couple. In the scenes with Aimee, Howard, who was a very good actor, seems to play the part like a man with too much starch in his collar.

Leaving that minor detail aside, this is a good, suspenseful movie and well worth watching.

Rating: 7/10

This is a slightly confused smuggling mystery with an oddly cast Trevor Howard as "David", a British archaeologist sent to Tunisia to supervise the removal of some artefacts. He arrives at the inn run by "Anna" (Anouk Aimée) and a slightly sinister pianist Wilfred Hyde-White ("Anjo"). Next thing, he is involved in a gun-smuggling racket with local hoodlum Herbert Lom ("Rankl") and his lobster fisherman pal "Max" (Jacques Sernas) whilst slowly falling in love with the much younger "Anna". It's a good looking film, but the story has more holes than a Dutch cheese with just way too many co-incidences. Howard is fine, but Lom features all too rarely to build any sense of suspense. Sernas is positively smouldering so why Anouk would prefer the older man is slightly bewildering; and the casting of Miles Malleson - ordinarily the archetypical British vicar/train enthusiast as "Douvet" - the local policeman, is just a bit too baffling to make much sense of the really thinly spread story.

When I first heard of Ronald Neame's name, it was for POSEIDON' S ADVENTURE, back in 1972, the same for his pal John Guillermin, in 1975, it was this time concerning TOWERING INFERNO, both disaster seventies films, commercial, and not "author" features. I really discovered the authentic, genuine filmographies of those British movie makers much much later, and it was far more interesting, with not necessarily gross intentions, at least not as much as for the seventies Hollywood stuff. This one GOLDEN SALAMANDER, is pretty good, exciting, with a terrific Herb Lom in a character that suits him like a glove. The plot is unfortunately predictable but the directing, and photography purely stunning.

Watchable British thriller about gun-running in Post-WWII Tunisia with faint echoes of THE MALTESE FALCON (1941; except that the title artifact bears little relation to the main plot!), TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) and THE THIRD MAN (1949; not least the presence of two of its cast members), but is perhaps too low-key to be really memorable. Nonetheless, the film has a remarkable cast (Trevor Howard, Anouk Aimee', Herbert Lom, Walter Rilla, Miles Malleson, Jacques Sernas, Wilfrid Hyde-White) and nice, noir-ish atmosphere going for it - and is short enough (87 minutes, though some sources give this as 96!) to keep tedium at bay...which could result from its lack of incident (apart from a couple of confrontation scenes and a climactic fistfight between Howard and Lom) or the incongruous pairing of its two leads.

When I saw the cast for this, I figured the movie would either be very good or awful. Luckily, it was the former. Good acting, great cinematography, editing and a convincing character path make this movie a real classic. Of course there are the "exotic" Arabs, but their depiction is not as offensive as in most films of its era. The somewhat dazed performance by Anouk Aimee leads one to believe that she either had a lot of trouble with the English language, or overplayed her depressive qualities. The boar hunt sequence brings to mind the conclusion of the book "The Alexandria Quartet." Aside from these minor quibbles, I recommend The Golden Salamander to anyone with an interest in character development, intrigue, and film noir that isn't about people unjustly accused of criminal action, innocent people led into same, and heists gone wrong.