‘He was an inscrutable oriental and she is the prettiest little mathematician you ever saw.’
A Swedish scientist is carrying out advanced experiments using a new, untapped energy source, but intelligence agencies are concerned about the loyalties of his assistant. Shortly after a test ends in disaster, the pair disappear and a top agent is assigned to track them down…
Multi-national science fiction thriller that’s a surprising precursor to the Eurospy craze of the 1960s and the adventures of a certain agent 007. This story setup was to become very familiar over the following decade. Yes, there’s a brilliant boffin (elderly Gino Cervi) and guess what? He’s invented a super weapon that ‘must not fall into the wrong hands’. The fact that he gets kidnapped, along with assistant Lin-Chor (Sabu), is about as surprising as the fact that he also has a beautiful daughter (American actress Martha Hyer).
Cervi’s fallen into the hands of Mrs Latour (Micheline Presly – beautiful but deadly), who will sell his (cheerfully vague) invention to the highest bidder with the help of the traitorous Dr Brandes (Wolfgang Priess – a bit of a whiner if I’m honest). Top agent Peter Lundstrom (Carlos Thompson – all business, but a bit suave with it) is assigned to get him back and guarantee the safety of the free world. He is helped by a veritable army of international espionage operatives, though, which makes a nice change from the future being placed in the hands of one maverick agent!
‘We were looking for my lost contact lens. Honestly.’
From then on, it’s the itinerary of glamorous cities, exotic locations, some tepid gun play and a couple of car chases which end with one vehicle taking a predictable header off a convenient cliffside. But, of course, all this is happening before Connery’s ‘Bond’ arrived in ‘Dr No’ (1962) and the formula became so overworked and commonplace. But, if all these elements sound very familiar, the way they are handled by veteran director William Dieterle does not anticipate the template that the success of Bond created.
Instead, this is a very grounded tale, with more of a ‘cold war thriller’ type vibe than anything else. Even the climactic scenes at the Buddhist temple in the jungle are dealt with in a very matter of fact and realistic way, without any outlandish flourishes or touches of humour. This visually striking location actually makes for the most impressive element of the film but its impressive architecture, and the resident monks, are merely a backdrop for the climactic action, rather than fully integrated with it.
Perhaps in order to heighten this more realistic approach, we are treated to a significant (and completely unnecessary) contribution from our old friend, Voiceover Man. He can barely shut up in the film’s early stages, even speaking over characters exchanging dialogue! ls it really vital for the audience to know the names and nationalities of all the 20 or so security chiefs attending the conference about the missing men? Sure, a couple of them do have a part to play later on, but most of them we never see again. He even tells us who sends the car to meet Thompson and Hyer at the airport when they arrive in Nice, what hotel they are booking into and under what names they are registering. Things that could have been shown if the audience really needed to know about them (which they don’t).
And that’s the major flaw of this French-Italian-West German co-production. It makes such an effort to present a serious and realistic thriller that all the life is sucked out of it. Things do pick up in the last 20 minutes or so when Thompson and Hyer are stranded in the jungle on the way to the temple; facing lethal snakes and quicksand, but it’s far too little too later in a film that lasts two hours. The script was co-authored by Jo Eisinger, whose best-known credits are for the Film Noir classics ‘Gilda’ (1946) and ‘Night and The City’ (1950), but there’s little of the drive of those projects evident in his work here.
‘I thought it was the pretty girl who always did the snake dance…’
Hyer was Oscar nominated around the time this film was in production; getting the nod for her supporting role in Vincente Minnelli’s ‘Some Came Running’ (1959). Unfortunately, it was not a springboard to leading lady status and she remained as a second string in subsequent Hollywood productions. Presly’s film career has lasted for more than three quarters of a century; from her first part in 1937 to a role in Sophie Marceau rom-com ‘The Missionaries’ (2014) when she was in her nineties.
But the most interesting name here is director Dieterle, who began as an actor in his native Germany in the silent era, even appearing in a major supporting role in F W Murnau’s expressionist classic ‘Faust’ (1926). By then he had started directing, and it was in this capacity that he hit pay dirt with his very first Hollywood project ‘The Last Flight’ (1931). With no desire to return home due to the rise of nationalism and the Nazi party, he went to work in earnest, delivering another 20 films by 1935, including projects with Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, and many other marquee names of the era. He was Oscar nominated for ‘The Life of Emile Zola’ (1938) and was behind the megaphone for classics like ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1939) with Charles Laughton and ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’ (1941). Unfortunately, in the paranoia of 1950’s Hollywood, his old film ‘Blockade’ (1938) was regarded as ‘suspect’ and, although he was never officially blacklisted as a communist sympathiser, no-one would offer him work and the State Department made it difficult for him to travel abroad. lnevitably, he returned to Europe permanently and made another dozen or so features (most for Television) before retiring in the mid-1960s.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with this film; it’s professionally shot, and competently performed and produced. lt’s just not very interesting.
Mark David Welsh 