Le Secret de la liste rouge

British adventure film with Steve Cochran and Hildegard Knef

In the wake of the successful wave of adventure films, the British dirty film producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) could not resist the temptation of what was supposed to be an easy box office success. Based on an uninspired script, he brought together a number of stars in front of an impressive natural backdrop, but unfortunately they didn't really know what they were supposed to be playing.

No matter, as always it's about murder, drugs, kidnapping and forced prostitution. A tough pilot (Steve Cochran) is hired for obscure air transport. A mysterious widow (Hildegard Knef) continues her late husband's illegal business with an administrator (Martin Benson). A beautiful singer (Vivi Bach) has to realize that sexual services are also part of her job profile. And a smart inspector (Paul Hubschmid) from Lisbon is already there to put the culprits behind bars.

In between there are vocal performances by La Neff Das geht beim ersten Mal vorbei / (It'll pass the first time) and the funny Vivi (Hey You). Maria Rohm (married to producer Harry Alan Towers since 1964) and Dietmar Schönherr (husband of Vivi Bach) can be seen in other roles. Everything stays in the family!

The shots from Mozambique are really nice to look at. However, the showdown takes place at Victoria Falls, which is located in Zambia. Well, it's also Africa! :-(

Hildegarde Neff, as she was known internationally, wears dresses by Pierre Balmain (1914-1982), who also dressed Marlene Dietrich (No Highway in the Sky, 1951) and Lilli Palmer (Adorable Julia, 1961). Otherwise, Hilde hardly has anything to do. In the meantime, she completely disappears from the scene until shortly before the end. Well, the main thing is that the fee was paid on time!

This film was to be the last for leading actor Steve Cochran (1917-1965), who so convincingly played a worker in crisis in "Il grido" (1957). In 1965 he died of natural causes on his yacht cruising off Guatemala. What was piquant was that he had three Mexican women on board who couldn't maneuver the ship and were left floating with the film star's body until they were found ten days later. The writer Paul Auster immortalized this incredible episode in his novel "Sunset Park" (2010). There are things!!!

Steve Cochran is a pilot stranded in Lisbon without a job. He crashed a plane, and although he was held blameless, no one wants to hire him. Then a one-way ticket to Lourenço Marques, (now Maputo) in Mozambique shows up, so he takes a Lufthansa(?) flight. His prospective employer is dead, but the organization is still active, and its current head, Martin Benson, takes him on, while he fights with widow Hildegarde Neff for control. Cochran soon discovers that a pilot is needed for flying illegal drugs around, and for smuggling. After an hour, there's a corpse to deal with.

Martin Curtis' camerawork is excellent, but the movie is wrecked by the editor, Peter Boita. The pacing is glacial, with Cochran needing twenty minutes to get out of Portugal. The movie times in at a hundred minutes, but it might have been a zippy seventy except that director Robert Lynn likes to show people strolling about, taking them from a car to a hotel's door, or shoot a chase scene with as few cuts as possible, and Boita indulges him in this.

Johnny Douglas' score makes this pace even more evident by the music he uses during what should be exciting scenes: he uses scales on a guitar, single notes taking about a second each.

This is an excellent movie! I just watched it as a blu ray dvd, it looks great! Made in 1964, it is one of those older films, where the viewer needs to have some patience as the story develops. The script is outstanding, it is by Peter Yeldham, who wrote many fine movies. All the cast are very good.

What makes this movie different than many films, is that it is about a 50/50 combination of adventure and mystery. That means there aren't as many big-action type scenes as in a pure adventure film. This is not an imitation James Bond type movie. There's very good character development. Steve Cochran is likeable as the world-weary American pilot who steps up when needed. Vivi Bach and Hildegard Knef are very classy. There's a 1960's feel, in a kind of different way than usual. I suspect some viewers don't "get" this movie, because they expected a cheesy Bond knock off. This is not that, at all. Highly recommended, especially on the new blu ray version.

Despite the exotic-sounding destination, MOZAMBIQUE turns out to be one deathly dull movie and another lame potboiler from producer Harry Alan Towers. The only thing really interesting about it is that it was actually filmed on location in the country, but sadly the film-makers fail to make use of their locale to add authenticity to the movie. It could just as easily have taken place in London.

The plot sees ageing American hero Steve Cochran off on his holidays when he runs foul of a drug smuggling ring and soon finds himself mixed up in all kinds of spy-style shenanigans. Cochran is uninteresting in the role as are the rest of the no-name cast; the director is more interested in his dancing girls with the likes of Hildegard Knef relegated to eye candy. There are a couple of very average fist fights here but it's all so dull and desperately James Bond style that you just won't care about them or indeed anything in the movie.

A merry yarn and predictably cheesy in all the right places. The fight scenes are particularly wanting and the dialogue is more than inadequate in places, but one is compelled to hang in there to let the plot unravel. The characters are implausible rather than larger-than-life, especially the Arab contingent, but this was 1965 and the swinging sixties seems an acceptable excuse. As usual, for movies of this period and genre, the hero is sadly old enough to be the father of the damsel in distress, leaving one to wonder: where were all the young, virile men before 1970? Perhaps it's also somewhat surprising that, being a British-made film, there is a distinct lack of black actors and extras, especially as this actually was filmed in Mozambique! Overall, it's not the worst way to kill an hour and a half, unless you have something better to do such as walk the dog.