South of Algiers (1953)

Awesome Movie

An Exercise In Nonsense

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Racism is implicit in this movie: the cast and crew must have smelt the coming rebellion against French colonial rule. All the Arab characters were played by Europeans, albeit the main Arab role, "Thank-you", was played by an Indian-Englishmen, who'd gone to Oxford, was probably the most educated person on the set. He seemed to be heavily made up, with skin darkening, which reminds me that the English in India sometimes referred to Indians as "blacks" (one of the nicer terms). There was one name in the cast, "Abdie", whom I cannot remember, who was played by "Massoud". Well, how did the audience like it? How did the audience react to little Jasmine and her brother with their donkey? How did these two "desert Arabs" come to speak English? Racism is a sort of romance, where at the end the romantic ones slaughter those about whom the romance is written. That's the plan, anyway. In actual life, usually it is the racist-romantics who get slaughtered, or at least lose their empires. Can we say that the plot, concerning an ancient Roman, "Marcus Manelius", a looter of a city of the other ancient empire in the region, Carthage, successor to Phoenecia, warns us of the fate of all empires? Is that the actual message of the movie with Van Heflin's gentle humor?

Writer Nicholas Chapman (Van Heflin) teams up with archaeologist Dr. Burnet and his pretty daughter (Eric Portman, Wanda Hendrix) to search for golden mask of Moloch. Two thieves (Jacques Brunius and Charles Goldner) try to sabotage the expedition to get the mask for themselves. Tomb-raiding adventure film is very dry and very dull. Forced romance between Van Heflin and a girl young enough to be his daughter doesn't help. Partially shot on location in Algiers but there's still plenty of poor rear projection effects. Ultimately, it's an avoidable film that is lacking adventure or suspense -- two prerequisites for movies of this type.

The thing that struck me about this movie was how much it set itself apart from similar 'treasure hunt' movies of its day. None of the acting was so overdone that it became unbareable. And the authenticity of the setting and location were extremely refreshing, peeking through the dusty cotton print that has survived. Van was actually cool. He didn't do any big cliches that was criminal. The Egyptian cast was first rate. No Peter Lorre's and miscast Europeans playing the native tongue to the ground. Jack Lee. BAM.

This movie has not been seen anywhere for several years (that I am aware of. The story deals with an archaeologist's passion to find a fabulous golden mask thought to be buried in a Roman tomb. The hunt begins in Rome and ends in the sands of Africa.The pursuers of the mask range in character from good to evil. The movie rather reminded me of the movie,Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Both are in black and white, dealing with greed and the consequences of greed.The flavor of this movie was interesting to me. The rather bleak desert locations were more than made-up for by the depiction of the local tribes and their customs. Unfortunately for this movie, the background music was seriously overdone, almost detracting from it. I find this to be the case often with early European movies. However, if you enjoy treasure hunts and ancient history somewhat fictionalized, this is a treasure hunt movie worth seeing. I'd like to see it again.