Richard
Widmark plays a Hemingwayesque writer, rogue and
adventurer (with the requisite death wish, plane crashes and all) living in a
self-imposed Central American exile; eating, drinking, fishing and whoring.
Like Hemingway he suffers from writer’s block (he thinks all his current
writing is “phony” – as opposed when he knew he could write because “he knew
the truth, he lived it, he felt it.”) and too much booze. Jane Greer shows up looking for him (and trying not to be obvious; though as
is later pointed out “she is trying to take him for a ride”); kind of a role
reversal from her picture of ten years earlier (Out of the Past) when she was
self-exiled in Mexico and Robert Mitchum is sent to
look for her. But her character provides the grist for the story and aims to
manipulate Widmark all the way. Despite it’s sun drenched Technicolor and
widescreen presentation the movie (SuperScope 235), primarily due to its
script, pales in comparison with Out of the Past. But then again this isn’t a
noir thriller; it’s more of an adventure picture. While canoodling during a
flying vacation Widmark and Greer crash land and find themselves houseguests of
Trevor
Howard (still a new face in Hollywood) in a
scenario first seen in 1932 with The Most
Dangerous Game the hunter and the prey and all
of that + plus crypto-Nazis. That’s when the plot gets interesting and timely
for it’s day. Saturday morning fun, but don’t expect anything more special than
a “B-movie” with superior talent in front of the camera. Best line “What do you know about truth
or honesty, doing it the hard way without your big brown eyes to get ahead,
well don’t give yourself too much credit anyone of those four eyed monsters
from your nosy little magazine might have done just as well. I was ready. Do
you do this for money or do you get a build out of prying into other people’s
lives? The new kind of journalism, ‘let’s play peeping Tom’.” Saturday B-movie
all the way, and I am loving it.
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