Golden Salamander (1950)

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

What is an interesting plot conceptually ends up dropping down to mediocrity thanks to moments of slowness that seem to make the film drag on to eternity. Obviously, the "Golden Salamander" is a take-off on the legend of the "Maltese Falcon" with the mysterious statue of the tiny lizard (enlarged to iguana size) providing the film's theme of "The best way to conquer evil is to confront it". That's the case for the British Trevor Howard, in Northern Africa for "private business" and his sudden involvement in a ring of thieves lead by the nasty Herbert Lom. Long before the shout of "Clouseau!" would drive him to insanity, Lom was already playing film heavy's in British thrillers like this, and for a side-kick, he gets none other than a very thin Wilfred Hyde White, resembling Percy Kilbride, who is the first person to encounter Howard when he arrives at the inn run by Anouck Aimee, simply billed by her first name.There's a lot of insinuation that certain sleazy characters aren't as bad as they seem or that those who seem nice or on the side of the law really aren't. While this provides some potentiality for clever plot twists, some of those moments aren't clarified for plot line purposes and the results are somewhat confusing. An extensive chase sequence towards the end of the film seems to go on forever and leads into more plot developments which extends the film's running time when it seemed as if it was already running out of plot. Ronald Neame's direction certainly isn't to blame and neither are the performances who do their best to enliven the action. Compared to American romantic heroes of the time, Howard is certainly a unique leading man and manages to stay charming even if he doesn't fall into the same league as the crop of stars doing similar adventure yarns in Hollywood films. What ultimately decreases overall interest in the film is the excessive use of moments of action with little to no sound which really proves that sometimes, silence is deafening.

Trevor Howard is driving to a small Tunisian town in the pouring rain but a rock slide blocks the road and he has to hoof it. He stumbles across a disabled truck carrying a load of contraband pistols...a couple of dudes approach and he hides....he sees the dudes faces in lightning and so the plot is in motion. In a café in town he meets the lackadaisical piano player and mopey barmaid Anouk Aimee. Then the dudes from the truck come in the café and the plot thickens. The truck dudes know he was stranded by the rock slide so they ask him if he saw them or the truck. Gosh,no says he. They don't believe him. One of the dudes is Max. After awhile he convinces Max to run away from the other dude and hightail it to Paris, so he can pursue his career as an artist (not kidding). Max says OK, but the other dude finds out & makes Max go for a swim in concrete boots. Then Howard goes to the police chief to narc on the other dude who snuffed Max but turns out the chief is on the take. Matter of fact the whole town is crooked and owned by the villain who lives behind a desk in the fancy spread outside town. He's the kingpin of the gun-running operation.Well, after some romance between Howard and Aimee, lots of running in the drably scenic Tunisian hills and dales,the good guys and the villains end up all together outside town at Villa d'villain. Its not a bad movie although Anouk Aimee seems in a coma in most scenes and inaudible as well. Howard was 37 when he made this, he's not handsome and he he looks 50 so his Kissie scenes with 19 year old Aimee are really gross and totally unbelievable. Other than that, it has some suspense and has a nice quick pace. I think I'll give it 6 instead of 5.

With her little-girl voice and arched eyebrows, a 17-year old Anouk (Aimee) is a real attention-getter. Having her fall for the much older and plainer Trevor Howard, however, is something of a stretch. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating movie to look at even if the basic plot is unexceptional. Archaeologist Howard travels to north Africa to retrieve shipwrecked treasures that include a golden salamander. There he stumbles across a network of gun- smugglers and hooks up with the exotic Anna (Anouk) in a seedy, atmospheric café. Just who is and who isn't a part of the network generates some suspense.But the movie's strength is in the acting and the photography. Howard is superb, as usual, while Anouk manages to be both emotionally vulnerable and surprisingly accomplished in her first big part. Special mention should go to Walter Rilla for his super slick version of a gangster kingpin. He looks and acts the sinister role to a proverbial T.However, what I liked best is what the pro's call "mise-en-scene", ie. the placing of a scene. Someone in production had the great idea of filming on location, along the north African coast line. This results in a number of visually stunning compositions made all the more so by the subtle tonalities that only black& white photography can produce. Catch the romantic scene on the beach with the setting sun in deep-focus background. Color is simply too literal to capture this kind of poetic effect.The dialogue is spiced up nicely with several exotic pearls of wisdom, but what about that escape scene by the cliff which seems pretty implausible-- how did Hyde-Whyte know a sheep flock would pass at exactly the right time. Or the climax, which seems a little too tame for my liking. Nonetheless, it's one of those movies that's stayed with me over the years for reasons I can't quite pin down. I guess it's something about the authentic crowds along the Arab bazaar or the sheer poetry of that coast line stretching into the distance and beyond. Yes indeed, there's a lot to be said for the old black & white.

Watchable British thriller about gun-running in Post-WWII Tunisia with faint echoes of THE MALTESE FALCON (1941; except that the title artifact bears little relation to the main plot!), TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) and THE THIRD MAN (1949; not least the presence of two of its cast members), but is perhaps too low-key to be really memorable. Nonetheless, the film has a remarkable cast (Trevor Howard, Anouk Aimee', Herbert Lom, Walter Rilla, Miles Malleson, Jacques Sernas, Wilfrid Hyde-White) and nice, noir-ish atmosphere going for it - and is short enough (87 minutes, though some sources give this as 96!) to keep tedium at bay...which could result from its lack of incident (apart from a couple of confrontation scenes and a climactic fistfight between Howard and Lom) or the incongruous pairing of its two leads.