L'avventuriero

Anthony Quinn is ready and able, but he has nothing to do in THE ROVER, an alternately boring and confusing adaptation of the novel. You won't care what happens to him or anyone else in the movie. Movie has a beautiful score by Ennio Morricone, but it seems to have been made for a totally different movie, with the music frequently inappropriate for the scenes it plays in

The movie "L'avventuriero" failed to achieve the expected success. Critics argue that the film adaptation falls short in making the human conflicts believable, resulting in an adventure story that fails to captivate the viewer. The plot loses its way throughout the movie, making the pacing tedious. However, some cinephiles may appreciate the melancholic ending as perhaps poetic.

There are two noteworthy aspects: 1) The music composed by the renowned Ennio Morricone (1928-2020); 2) The Italian actress Rossana Schiaffino (1939-2009), who compensates for the lack of dramatic resources with the beauty of her face.

Conrad, Quinn, Young, Hayworth (plus Johnson and Dawson) and Schiaffino. Excellent photography, good locations. But ...

The early scenes were promising, but when Quinn reached the all-but- deserted village the film started to drag and never picked up pace.

Given a very limited distribution (despite the people involved) this international production remains, even now, an obscure (and unappetizing) historical piece; not all that much of a surprise, however, since it just isn't very good – either as drama, adventure, or as an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel.

Director Young was an expert at action (having pretty much cemented the style of the James Bond extravaganzas); however, this is a largely talky and stodgy affair – which, perhaps in keeping with the film's very title, doesn't seem to know where it's headed! Ennio Morricone provides the suitably melancholic music; the main cast seems impressive on paper but, for the most part, it has very little to work with here – resulting in generally awkward performances. The titular seafaring character is played by Anthony Quinn – a veteran of (much better) pirate sagas, such as the prime THE BLACK SWAN (1942), the vintage AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952; with which I should be re-acquainting myself over the next week-end, incidentally) and the similarly meaningful but more successful A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA (1965) – whose exploits, typically for the larger-than-life actor, end in self-sacrifice (albeit a recurring motif in the author's fatalistic work as well, as can be judged from the likes of "Heart Of Darkness" and "Lord Jim").

Rosanna Schiaffino has the most difficult – and self-conscious – part as the unstable yet voluptuous woman (whose odd behavior is eventually explained in a brief flashback) protected by Quinn from harassment by the locals and the lustful attentions of her ageing 'guardian'. For an actress who had been the personification of allure and glamour, Rita Hayworth is here saddled with an unenviable frumpy look and, even worse, a thankless characterization (by the way, she and Quinn had last appeared together 26 years previously in BLOOD AND SAND [1941])! Richard Johnson's earnest officer, then, supplies belated antagonism to Quinn in the fields of both romance and patriotic duty (the setting is post-Revolutionary France).

This is a unique film on a unique novel. It is Joseph Conrad's only historical novel and it was the last novel he completed. It is a Napoleonic novel, but the main story here is not about political intrigue and rivalry between French and British interests, that's only the superficial frame of a much more interesting relationship of an old man coming home with the sea, which he has been roaming for 30 years and now seems to definitely leave behind. But political pettiness and shortsightedness intervene and directs his destiny off course into a very unintended direction. It's a psychological investigation of destiny and its always unfathomable ways in interfering with man's intentions. Anthony Quinn makes a fantastic performance of a very melancholy puppet in the hands of an incalculable destiny, and Rita Hayworth is surprisingly good as an experienced woman trying to sedcure him in reality. Richard Johnson is perfect as the French naval officer navigating the political adventure, and they actually all fail in their purposes, which makes even this historical novel very typical of Joseph Conrad. Ennio Morricone has furnished the film with one of his finest film scores, and the natural settings are overwhelmingly beautiful. This is above all a very beautiful film and as such a rare gem in the treasury of Terence Young's vast and very diversified production.