El secreto del desierto

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.

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.

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?

Doctor Burnet (Eric Portman) is an archaeologist from the British Museum. He is searching for the Golden Mask of Moloch and reluctantly takes along adventure writer Nicholas Chapman (Van Heflin) who offers to work for free. They are joined by Burnet's daughter Anne and followed by unscrupulous treasure hunters.

The real life street footage in Algiers is interesting. The Arab women seems to be conservatively dressed and the men are wearing fez hats. The dude doing the belly dancing is weird but I'm guessing that a female performer would never do it in the streets although a girl does do a fun dance in the desert. Let's be frank. The story is a bland Indiana Jones in a suit and tie. The local colors are much more interesting and the locations are great. Sadly, this chocolate covered confection has a bland chalky white center as in the white characters are all very bland.

I watched this film for Van Heflin and Eric Portman; both usually excellent when given some half decent material. Here they floundered, unable to make something of the dreary dialogue and predictable plot. There was jerky editing of the film, with obvious back projection and use of actors' doubles on location, as well as location shooting cut in from another (bigger) budget film (maybe Portman's and Thorold Dickinson's earlier 'Men of Tomorrow') mixed up with studio close ups. The mix is very uneven and after a while it becomes part of the entertainment to spot whether it's a) studio b) location c) doubles etc Van Heflin does his best, trying to instill some oomph into his supposedly devil may care risk taker entrepreneur character. Trouble is Heflin looks as though he checks the risk percentage on ev ery step he takes. Portman has to watch endless tribal singing and dancing, probably taken from that other African film cut into this one. Wanda Hendrix has so little to do she could have phoned her performance in. However it passed away an hour or so on a wet winter's evening.