La corda di sabbia

What a great cast, what a top director and what a disappointing movie. I blame the script, or rather lack of one, cause nobody involved seems to quite know what it is all about. Something about diamonds? That'll do, let's start filming. Famously Casablanca was already in production without a finished script, and look how well that turned out, right? Just put some of that cast in another exotic location and Fate and sheer acting talent, aided by some stylish camera-work will do the rest. Alas, it didn't. The muddled story limps along from scene to tepid scene, the plot holes are abundant and the Great Romance never convinces for a moment. I kept hoping the story would catch fire at some point, but it never does. Will Paul Henreid turn out to be a Nazi war criminal? Where did Peter Lorre wander off to? Does Claude Rains have any aces up his sleeve? Why would anybody believe the girl killed the doctor? Is she a former member of the French Resistance, set out to kill Vogel? Wouldn't that sorta spice up this bland story? Nah, it turns out everybody is just what they appear to be. With some solid script doctoring this could have become a great adventure movie. Shame.

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.

Rope of Sand, an adventure thriller supposedly set in post-WW II South Africa, certainly receives the vote of "classic" in my book. Far away places, a romance triangle, suspense, even a bit of humor at times...it's all there in a neatly executed, well-acted plot that makes you wish YOU could have been there and tried just what Burt Lancaster did. I have watched this movie more than half a dozen times over the years and still get that sense of intrigue and mystery and fascination with the setting and story that I got on the first occasion, as a child. The film noir era was coming to a close when this movie was created in 1949 but most of the crucial elements are there including use of the black and white, music score, contrasting dialog and action scenes, and so on, right up to the final scene. Perhaps the screenplay might have gotten a little more mileage out of Corrine Calvet and Burt but we need to remember that we're judging films of this era against a different yardstick. I seriously don't think that this movie would have come together at all using actors working today because they would all be hungering for a bigger piece of the movie than anyone got here or typically does get in film noir. This is not to mention what current directors typically do as a substitute for what film noir did with the camera and timing of scene combinations. So I disagree with the previous reviewer. Watch this if you can and enjoy!

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.

Director William Dieterle did better movies than ROPE OF SAND but he never did one in more unusual settings than in South West Africa, now Namibia. Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre had featured in CASABLANCA seven years earlier, Rains had pulled off one of his best performances in Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS three years earlier, and Lancaster was beginning to make a name for himself. A really good cast for a film that did not seem set for great box office returns.

Interesting to note that apartheid was about to appear in that part of the world, yet it is human greed that dominates the film, with diamonds the commodity most sought.

Acting is generally good, although the French accent hinders Calvet's delivery, even renders it awkward at times. The fighting sequences fall somewhat short of credible. The screenplay is also uneven. Photography is very good.

As a little known film, it deserves watching. And it posts enough quality to not rate a waste of time. 8/10.