The Big Gamble

Saw the original release in 1962 and thought Stephen Boyd should have been in a better film since his was post Ben Hur. Fast forward to 2020 and I loved Stephen in this film. Beyond tragic that he died at age 45. He was a very compelling screen presence. This one is for Stephen's fans to remember him. Always.

Stephen Boyd and bride Juliette Gréco go to his family in Ireland, where matriarch Sybil Thorndike persuades the family to finance their scheme to start a trucking firm in Africa. The catch is they have to take along bank clerk David Wayne lest they do anything foolish or get into trouble. There is foolishness and trouble, of course, a lot of it provided by Wayne.

There's loads of nice scenery, and Africa looks good too. The movie was shot in Ireland and Côte D'Ivoire. Cinematographer William Mellor shoots the trucking scenes in the countryside to make the landscape look threatening, old lovers and Gregory Ratoff turn up; if the trials and tribulations make it look like THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT written very big, there's still meat on e bones of this story.

It's the fourth movie Miss Gréco appeared in for producer Darryl F. Zanuck in his European wanderjahr after handing over 20th Century-Fox to others. He would return after the disaster of CLEOPATRA, and be kicked out himself after TORA! TORA! TORA! bombed, the last of the old-line moguls. He would die in 1979, aged 77.

This is an entertaining movie about the trials and tribulations, and there are many, of an Irishman, his wife and his cousin, as they decide to travel to the Ivory Coast to start a trucking business. For all you Stephen Boyd fans, in this one, he's young, handsome and Irish and has just the right rambling, pioneering spirit needed for the part. He's fun to watch! Juliette Greco is charming and amusing as his wife and David Wayne contributes well to some of the best scenes in the film.

The characters love, fight, get drunk, sing Irish ballads, and meet up with many out-of-the-ordinary local characters during this cross-continent global trek from Ireland to Africa.

There's never a dull moment! It's an enjoyable little film.

Except for the beginning which takes place in a chic wealthy sullen family -which does not fit well in the main plot-,"linear" best describes this movie.A minor movie for highly talented Richard Fleischer who had already directed Juliette Greco in "crack in the mirror" the year before.Greco has some lines in French with her compatriots Fernand Ledoux as a customs officer and Jacques Marin.Which is very useful to her Irish husband Stephen Boyd.

It's the story of the odyssey of a lorry through the jungle and its fevers ,its thieves ,its precipices and its rivers in spate .A critic called it " a cross between "African Queen" and "Le Salaire De La Peur" (wages of fear).Some of the scenes were more or less "inspired" by HG Clouzot's work (1953)but "Gamble" never reaches its level of intensity.Boyd ,Greco and David Wayne team up for better of for worse,and armed up with three hundred boxes of canned beer,they struggle against a hostile nature.

Not one of Richard Fleischer's happiest projects, (he complained Producer Darryl F. Zanuck insisted on coming to Africa with the crew and kept interfering). It's a romp that doesn't really romp; an African adventure that's played too broadly and in desperate need of a script, (Irwin Shaw did the screenplay and it wasn't his finest hour). Stephen Boyd is the brash, arrogant Irishman who heads to the Ivory Coast with French wife Juliette Greco and Irish cousin David Wayne in the hope of starting up a trucking business. Needless to say, things don't go too well. There are a few good set-pieces as well as too much local colour and the opening scenes in Dublin are now of some historical interest in showing how a city can change in fifty years. Ideal for a wet Saturday afternoon is about the best you can say for it.