The Oscar-winning “Casablanca” (1942) was not only the high point of Hal Wallis’ career at Warner Bros. — where he had risen from publicist to production chief — but basically the end of it. He bitterly recalled in memoirs how when the Best Picture award was announced, members of the Warner family blocked his path so Jack L. could accept it.
Wallis shortly thereafter decamped to Paramount, where he remained for a quarter-century as a highly succesful independent producer. Warner Bros. announced a sequel to “Casablanca” called “Brazzaville” to be written and produced by Frederick Stephani (remembered for his sole directorial debut, the first “Flash Gordon” sequel) but that never happened. The studio did try to cash in with half a dozen vaguely similar stories with one or more of the same cast, in some cases augmented by performers (George Raft, Hedy Lamarr and the and Dennis Morgan) who were originally considered for “Casablanca.” The most famous of these, the notoriously flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback “Passage to Marseilles” had Bogart, Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Michele Morgan, one of the proposed Ilsas, working for “Casablanca” director Michael Curtiz.
“Rope of Sand” (1949) was Wallis’ first effort in this vein, reuniting Paul Henried, Claude Rains and Lorre in a noirish adventure about diamond thieves set in South Africa. Like “Casablanca,” it opens with voice-over narration and a man under pursuit being shot to death by the authorities — in this case a corrupt and sadistic police captain played by a cast-against type Henreid, who was rarely better as an actor.
Bogart being unavailable — he would make the “Casablanca”-inflected flop “Sirocco” for his own production company, headquartered at Columbia — Wallis gave top billing to his discovery Burt Lancaster, who was under personal contract. Lancaster plays a suspected thief who returns to settle the score with Henreid for an earlier beating.
Claude Rains is a silky diamond company executive who decides that it might be more efficent to employ Corrine Calvet (her screen debut) to pry the gems’ location out of Lancaster than letting Henreid, who he not-so-secret detests, obtain it by force.
Lorre and Sam Jaffee play shady characters in this atmospheric yarn (lots of smoky cafes and ceiling fans, photographed in high Hollywood style by much-nominated cinematographer Charles Lang), muscularly directed by another ex-Warner colleague of theirs, Wallis house director William Dieterle.
The latest in a series of deep catalogue titles licensed from Paramount by Olive Films, this black-and-white thriller looks great in a crisp, clean transfer. It’s the first of the Olive releases to use original poster art for the DVD cover.
Olive is also today releasing one of Paramount’s more interesting early VistaVision-Technicolor opuses, Edward Dmytryk’s “The Mountain” (1956) in a gorgeous transfer.
If people know this film at all, it’s as Spencer Tracy’s first film as a free-lancer after two decades at MGM. He and Metro had parted ways a year earlier, with Tracy walking off “Tribute to a Bad Man” (1956) claiming his health wouldn’t permit him to work on the Rocky Mountain location (according to blogger John McElwee, Tracy’s problems were more with the script and with leading lady Irene Papas, who was assigned when Grace Kelly, who Tracy preferred, exercised her right of script approval).
“The Mountain” was filmed on location in the Swiss alps, but Tracy had no problem with the altitude this time — it was based on a book he’d unsuccessful tried to get MGM to buy for. Paramount also agreed to Tracy’s request that they cast Robert Wagner (his co-star in “Broken Lance”) as his brother despite a thirty-year age difference.
Wagner’s a morally-challenged mountain clmber who plans to scavange a jetliner that’s crashed on a nearby mountaintop. Tracy, a retired guide, goes along to keep him from killing himself on the perilous crime up a steep mountain face and hopefully talk some sense into his younger sibling. Anna Kafshi — the future Mrs. Marlon Brando — makes her screen debut as the sole survivor of the crash, who Tracy tries to rescue while Wagner is looting the other passengers. Claire Trevor — Tracy’s co-star in “Dante’s Inferno” two decades earlier — plays his widowed girlfriend and William Demarest, of all people, is on hand as a priest.
The mountain climbing sequences are extremely well done. The fact that Tracy, thanks to decades of drinking, was an extremely weathered 55 years old (he looks more like the grizzled image in this UK poster than the airbrushed image on the DVD cover) adds to the drama.
