The Big Gamble

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.

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.

Recently Juliette Greco died and France lost one of its greatest icons. It is easy to hear her wonderful singing voice, but less easy to see and hear her voice on film. Just for the fluidity of her facial expressions from anger to passion make anything she was in worthwhile. I liked her pairing with Stephen Boyd in this film, and they exuded enthusiasm, fun and obvious pleasure at being together. It is one of the most enjoyable of films, right from the beginning to the final scenes, and if during this period anyone wants cheering up try and track it down. It is what it says on the poster an adventure film set in an ' Africa ' that may not please the more politically correct, but enjoy it for the acting as none of the actors, including Sybil Thorndyke, Gregory Ratoff and David Wayne never put a foot wrong. And yet it is Greco's film and it is a great pity that this wonderful actress and singer is less known in the US and the UK as she should be. Forget the existentialist tag and just watch this very human woman who had warmth, a face that in its beauty could express anything without a word said, and yet when she did speak either in English and French the magic flows. ' The Big Gamble ' is one to see over and over again. Finally try to find this film in Cinemascope, as I have not succeeded in doing so.

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.

The story of three people (Stephen Boyd, Juliette Greco and David Wayne) that go all the way from Ireland to the Ivory Coast in Africa to put on a truck business there.

Real action is supposed to start when they take a cargo of beer by truck through half the dark continent, but it never quite does; in fact the film recalls one of those current PC games for kids where they mustremove lots of obstacles in order to reach a final goal; here they have to free the truck from the Custom house, put aside a huge down tree across the road, go backwards in a thin pass with a mountain and an abyss on each side, avoid a crook who wants to steal their cargo, cross a wide growing river with the vehicle and go down full speed on a narrow road without brakes, but in fact powerful action and thrills never appear.

Stephen Boyd does well as the leader of the group but doesn't add much to his acting career with this one. Juliette Greco looks sensual and interesting as his wife and David Brian just goes along.

Definitely not one of prolific and versatile director Richard Fleischer's best products, perhaps "The Big Gamble" stands a watch but no much more than that.