Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

JohnHowardReid Rope of Sand suffers from a surfeit of additional dialogue. The scenes are often so verbose, Dieterle has to break them up, giving them some sort of pace by filming in very short takes from a large variety of camera angles, as in the card game sequence. On occasion he combines these effects with unobtrusive camera movement. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. There's just too much dialogue to overcome. The movie is all but buried under its weight. Still, some of the players do manage to come across effectively, particularly Claude Rains as a Machiavellian mining magnate and lovely Corinne Calvet, making an impressive Hollywood debut as the seductive Suzanne. (Although she receives "introducing" billing, she had in fact already appeared in three French films. Her husband John Bromfield has three small but important scenes as a tempted guard).Lancaster is somewhat stiff as the hero, but Henreid plays the sadistic commandant with unaccustomed gusto. On the other hand, Peter Lorre's part seems to have been conceived as an afterthought. Though mumbling his way through several scenes, he has really very little to do, his one big scene - an account of Lancaster's misfortunes - being made completely redundant by its repetition in a more vital flashback form later on in the picture... In the censored print under review, there's no climactic fight between Lancaster and Henreid at all. The former simply pushes his opponent out of the jeep, thus destroying the whole point of the film and denying the audience the all-action climax that all the elaborate groundwork has led us to expect. Instead we have a rather tame confrontation scene with Rains repeating the kind of ambivalent characterization that made him so unforgettable in Casablanca. (He has some typically bitter sarcastic humor too, which he delivers with his usual relish). Despite his prominence in the billing, Mike Mazurki has only a small bit. But Kenny Washington impresses, whilst Sam Jaffe plies his somewhat stereotyped stethoscope with his customary reliability. As expected, producer Wallis has dressed up this re-union with first-class production values, including Lang's moodily atmospheric black-and-white lighting, striking art direction and attractive costumes.

MARIO GAUCI This is the fourth merely adequate Burt Lancaster movie I am watching in a row (as part of my ongoing tribute to him to mark, albeit a month in advance, the fifteenth anniversary of his death) which comes more of a disappointment in this case given the fine director (William Dieterle) and cast (Lancaster, Paul Henried, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sam Jaffe and Mike Mazurki) involved. While it is true that Dieterle's career had already peaked with PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948) and went slowly downhill from there, the film's main fault lies is in the surprisingly uninteresting (given the desert location and diamond mine setting) plot that fails to give rise to much excitement or memorable incident. Naturally, with a cast of that calibre, some good scenes or lines cannot be amiss and, in particular, Rains (as a Macchiavelian director of the company) and Henried (effectively cast against type as the brutish foreman) seem to be relishing their roles; conversely, Lorre and Jaffe seem wasted in their underwritten parts of, respectively, a philosophizing fence and an alcoholic doctor. Another liability is leading lady Corinne Calvet: while looking sensual enough as the femme fatale hired by Rains to seduce adventurer Lancaster and eventually falling for him, her thick French accent become decidedly grating after a while! Incidentally, the copy I acquired is taken from a German print - with the opening credits in that language but the film, luckily, in English! I suppose it would be interesting to compare Val Guest's film from another era that I also happen to have in my collection - KILLER FORCE aka THE DIAMOND MERCENARIES (1975) - which, apart from the similar theme, also makes use of a stellar cast (Peter Fonda, Telly Savalas, Christopher Lee, Hugh O'Brian and O.J. Simpson) but, unfortunately, I will not have time to do so at present. I do not know if the fact that I have been watching lightweight fare all Summer long has made me lose patience somewhat with more of the same but, clearly, I was expecting to enjoy ROPE OF SAND more than I eventually did. Or, perhaps I am just overly anxious to start the upcoming Halloween Challenge in October...

gordonl56 Rope of Sand – 1949 I watched this one last night for the first time in more than twenty years. The last time I was not really "noir aware" so I took the whole thing as a lightweight action adventure. Boy was I wrong! This is a very dark noir with plenty of top noir talent involved. The film's location is a small town in the South African desert. The town is on the edge of a vast diamond country and is ran by the local diamond cartel. Lancaster plays a man with a problem. The problem? He knows where a small cache of diamonds are hidden. They are however inside the cartel's territory and the security tends to shoot first and see who they shot later. A further complication for Lancaster is that the head of the security forces, Paul Henreid, would like a "friendly word" or two. Henreid it seems knows about the diamonds and wants them for himself. Claude Rains plays Henreid's superior who is also in the running for the diamonds. Corinne Calvet plays a tart who makes a living by preying on wealthy men. She stages phony rapes and then blackmails the men for a healthy sum. She tries the gag on Rains who brushes her off but hires her to put the moves on Lancaster. We also have Peter Lorre wandering through doing a take on his Casablanca role. Here he is attempting to buy diamonds instead of selling letters of transit. Everyone seems in on the secret and they are all doing their best to apply a knife to someone else's back. Rains and Henreid really shine here with Henreid in particular standing out. The man makes a first rate villain! Calvet is OK but Liz Scott would have been perfect imo. The standard noir urban surroundings are discarded and replaced by the bleakness of the empty desert. This works quite well in giving the film a real sense of hopelessness.The impressive cast includes Burt Lancaster, Paul Henried, Claude Rains, Sam Jaffe, Nestor Paiva , Mike Mazurki, Peter Lorre and Corinne Calvet . The film was directed by William Dieterle who did such films as The Turning Point, Dark City and The Accused. Producing the film was Hal B. Wallis whose noirs are too many to list. The director of photography was Charles Lang Jr. Lang shot Desert Fury, Sudden Fear, The Big Heat, Man From Laramie, Female on the Beach and Ace in the Hole. Music is by Franz Waxman who scored Sunset Blvd, Rear Window, Dark Passage and He Ran all the Way among others. For a film with all this talent involved it does not get much press. I quite enjoyed it!

mb014f2908 This film is hard to find, but i finally got hold of a decent copy off ebay.co.uk recorded off a satellite channel. I'm glad i finally got to see it, it was very entertaining with numerous plot twists. The quartet of Lancaster, Rains, Henreid and Lorre make great viewing as they try and scene steal off each other at every turn. Claude Rains is smooth, silky and delightfully devious; Lancaster hulks, sulks and looms superbly. There is no discernible chemistry between Lancaster and the 'new' (well to US audiences) Corinne Calvert; which weakens their characters' motivation somewhat. Lancaster seems more in love with himself though, so tough competition for Corinne there. Calvert does a creditable turn here, ( though her French accent can be a little opaque), but she is outclassed easily by the men- Rains wipes the floor with her but she is stunning and exotic enough. Though her final clinch with Lancaster on the ship as they leave the desert hellhole that they've been inhabiting for the last hour and a half, is incredibly drippy and Lancaster looks as if he'd like shot of her big time. But that's the dialogue for you. Henreid is suitably nasty and sadistic and you can almost smell the sweat and feel the heat- so there is much to recommend in Rope of Sand.