Cargaison blanche

"Le Chemin de Rio" aka "Cargaison Blanche " is one of the last French movies of Robert Siodmak.With hindsight,this is just a rough draft of what will be fully realized in "Pièges" ,Siodmak final and best film in France (along with "Mollenard").

Siodmak began his career as a film noir auteur (Stürme der Leidenschaft" aka "Tumultes" starring Charles Boyer),but when he was driven away from his homeland by Goebbels he had no choice:thus his first French movies were impersonal:"Le Sexe Faible" and "La Crise Est Finie" ..

By 1937,he broached white slave trade.The first scene promised great things: a distraught girl in a bedroom with bricked up windows tries to escape from a luxury brothel.Surrounded on all sides ,she throws herself from the second floor.Another strong scene shows a good father having dinner with his wife.This man is part of the ring which....He takes good care of his seventeen -year- old daughter who is not allowed to leave the house after dark,who studies in a convent...A striking contrast.

Sadly ,the film is not really satisfying.There are elements of comedy and film noir and the mixture is not always palatable.A pair of journalists (in the grand tradition of American comedies) gets in the way.Besides ,Henri Jeanson's lines -which are often as witty as ever- do not fit well in that context.Best examples: two members of the ring are arrested as the ship sails near Rio: "It must be anarchists! " the witnesses say"No they are political prisoners!" "They are terrorists !look at the woman's face!"Or these lines the procurers exchange :"Why do you always wake me when I'm sleeping?-If you were not sleeping,I couldn't wake you!" This is a French film but the action takes place in Barcelona ,Spain.. Everybody knew that such nasty things could not happen in Marseille,France.It had to be another country.