Review by ulicknormanowen

"Soleil noir" represents one of the nadirs of the French cinema of the sixties;it has to be seen to be believed.

The outline was not uninteresting though: a patriarch has just died ; as the family is arguing about the inheritance , Beatrice hints at her older brother she has never known and who had to escape to Africa because of his collaboration with the Nazis in WW2. Nobody wants to hear about that black sheep of the family and she decided she would go to join him across the sea and bring him back home.....

Then things begin to go wrong :it's absolutely impossible to believe that Beatrice (Michèle Mercier,)who probably goes shopping in the Faubourg Saint Honoré, becomes overnight a raider , and winds up in a real dump in the middle of the desert where a bunch of former Nazis, crooks on the run and other assassins hide .Her brother (Daniel Gélin ,why did he get involved in that business?) does not want to go home ;she tries and she tries to convince him to come back with her, to no avail .In desperation, she puts on her vamp act because of course she knows she's coveted by all the guys around .But Beatrice 's hair is never messed up ,never a pearl of sweat on her forehead ,and always elegant in her bourgeois clothes .And when men try to enter her room ,she yells "out!" and they stay away! The only time she was almost raped,big brother came to her rescue.

The actors overplay to be sinister-looking , the action drags on ; the title "black sun" indicates that under the blistering sun of the desert ,dirty people conceal their shady past ; but it does not hide how dreadful the film is.