Passos em Falso

This is a German film and not any American Hollywood production, and it is not filmed on location in the swamps of Brazil but actually in Hamburg studios, but it is well made and surprisingly convincing for being all artifice. The story is true though, these rackets did go on and probably still go on today, and we shall never know how many girls from how many countries were lost this way. The music is good also and the one enjoyable thing about the movie. Raymond Burr is as impressive as ever as a qualified villain of professional double standards, and Scott Brady is a positive surprise for his honest acting. Johanna Matz like the other girls all young and pretty also make one-sidedly good impressions, especially Johanna Matz for her innocence. The Brazilian insights, especially in the row aboard the river boat in the end, are delightful, and the story makes sense although scary without exaggerations. It is worth watching but no more.

An American engineer helps a German girl escape the clutches of a white slavery ring in South America.

The movie's a peculiar production. The origin appears West German since the names in the credit crawl are German, while the cast, except for Brady, is also German. I guess the film was released here by Lindsley Parsons' low-budget outfit. All in all, the package seems odd since not many English-language films came from West Germany during this post-war period.

Anyway, the result plays like an exploitation movie with its tawdry subject-matter (notice all the euphemisms used for the taboo word "prostitute"), plus a suggestive title that, as I recall, was heavily promoted at the time. The opening part in the city plays pretty well, but once the action moves inland, the screenplay becomes darn near incoherent with its shifting locales minus connecting segues.

Still, Matz is a spunky little number, reminding me of Debbie Reynolds with an accent, while Brady delivers a surprisingly spirited performance as the white knight. Burr turns up in a sinister role so typical of his pre-Perry Mason period; at the same time, his jumbo tropical suit suggests a younger version of the great Sydney Greenstreet.

The movie has a few good moments and some suspense, but on the whole fails to rise above the level of exotic sleaze.

I decided to give They Were So Young a try firstly because of the short run time and secondly because it had Raymond Burr. It started off badly enough but slowly, and ever so gradually it began to draw me in. Not sure exactly how it happened but it did. To its credit the whole thing does move along at a brisk pace and is tightly directed. The story is kind of interesting and it does manage to create some real suspense. A gently love story does develop but it isn't played to hard and keep it just a supporting element to the overall story. I became involved enough to the point that all of a sudden it was over. Slight but entertaining film worth checking out.

Ninety-percent of this film is a well-made, exciting white slavery melodrama about a German girl lured to Brazil for "modeling" work but trapped in a white slavery racket. She turns to an American engineer working in Rio (Scott Brady) who initially asks for help from a powerful Brazilian industrialist, Jaime Coltos (Raymond Burr), but soon suspects that Coltos is not exactly what he appears to be. That's all developed well and acted convincingly by Burr, Brady, and newcomer Johanna Matz. Then there is a frame story explained in a talky prologue about how Coltos almost led Southern Brazil to secede from the rest of the country and how Coltos, modeling himself after Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr (!!!) was a brilliant strategist and almost a dictator. And at the end of the film, after the white slavery plot has been resolved and you think the film is over, we go back to the two characters in the frame story--a general and an American reporter--and we learn that Coltos was eventually found guilty of high treason and sentenced to hard labor for life. While Raymond Burr's character may be a crook and control a corrupt machine, there doesn't seem to be anything "political" about his actions in the film. I wonder if the frame story was added after the fact? And I wonder why? In any event, this little-known entry in the Raymond Burr filmography is worth seeking out. Coincidentally, it was one of the last releases of Lippert Pictures, the interesting low-budget company that was a kind of PRC of the late 40s and early 50s. Lippert always padded its release schedule with imported films, including a number of excellent UK and continental crime/mystery films, some featuring American stars, and as the studio wound down to its end, more and more foreign films appeared. My review has been of the US release of this film, entitled THEY WERE SO YOUNG (AND SO IN DANGER). Perhaps someone who has the original German language version could tell us if the frame story exists in the original, or if there were political elements in the main plot that were cut out for the American release.

This was presented to me as a film noir. It is not. It's an international cast in a flimsily plotted low-budget melodrama.

Raymond Burr is an icon of the second half of the last century because of his work in "Perry Mason." We noir fanatics know him also to have done some excellent work on the other side of the law in movies. If this was the direction his film career was going, "Perry Mason" kept him from ending up in Doris Wishman flicks.

The plot is a hodgepodge about prostitution and white slavery in Brazil. The German actress who gets top billing is attractive. Scott Brady is in it, too. He plays a good guy.

At first I thought this was my imagination. Then I noticed it with more than Ms. Matz and Brady: The actors often seem to be holding back laughter. They have constant half-smiles.

It's not so bad it's good, though. It isn't offensive. It simply offends the upstanding name of film noir.