Glenn Ford has one of his strongest roles in John Farrow's "Plunder of the Sun", playing a debt collector in over his head in the stolen antiquities market in Cuba and Mexico. The film is unique in its time and genre in that the entire film was made on location in Mexico, and the ancient ruins provide an interesting backdrop to the story and characters. It's a fun movie but ultimately all the build-up doesn't really lead to anything as interesting as it seemed it might.
There are many elements here that will remind the viewer of Huston's "Maltese Falcon" the general theme centered around a stolen cultural artifact, the fat man with mysterious motives (in this case, Francis L. Sullivan), the weird violent guy chasing after the treasure (a bleached blond Sean McClory), etc. And then of course we also have some of the elements that are typical of many suspense films of the 40s/50s (the "noir" kind): the spoiled rich party girl Julie (Diana Lynn), devoted but devious glamour lady Anna (Patricia Medina), and a decidedly ambiguous leading man in Ford's Al Colby.
So essentially we have a not-so-original story set in a very different and more convincing (because it's real) exotic setting, for what it's worth. I really enjoyed the scenes with Colby exploring the ruins when he first arrives in Mexico. Later we find that his character has apparently had a true spiritual epiphany on this occasion although his narrative comments only hint at this and he remains his typical ambiguous self through the rest of the film even going so far as to rob the ruins with the imminently unpleasant archaeologist Jefferson (McClory). This is typical of the problems I see in this film the resolution for the characters seemed in almost every case to be at odds with how they had been established earlier in the film, and there was little in the way of effective development to explain these changes. The film spends so much time building up the Julie character as a hussy from the Gloria Grahame school, but then it blows off all that steam with a lame hospital bedroom confessional scene. I really am not sure what they were trying to do with the Anna character. At times Farrow's direction and the costuming seemed to imply a kind of religious iconography, especially in the scene where Anna enters the room where Colby is arguing with Mexican archaeologist Navarro, with a procession behind her, wearing a kind of veil, and holding a gun in front of her like the rosary you could call her the may queen of death. But the film didn't really establish her very well as either a "fatale" character or a mature partner for the hero like most the characters in this film her actions seem arbitrary and to depend only on the circumstances that the plot demands. Speaking of Navarro, he's so underdeveloped that it's very jarring to find him later having an important impact on the plot's resolution. We don't even get his credit on IMDb, much less on the film itself, so I don't even know who played the role.
Ford's strong characterization provides enough impetus to carry the film along; the writers apparently saw "Gilda" and decided that Glenn Ford would be even more popular if he was a complete misogynist. There are some really fun lines of dialog that he throws out there in his cynical way. I enjoyed the scenes where he devised the code to try to fool Navarro. McClory was also very impressive in a menacing character role. There are numerous small character parts that are all handled with great consistency by director Farrow.
A final note one interesting aspect of this movie is that the various "hiding places" used in the film are all so terribly obvious that it's almost impossible to believe it was accidental. And I believe there was even a line of dialog in the film about the best hiding place being the most obvious one. Thus Ford hides the parchment in his shoes (duh!), with the hotel lobby clerk, etc. And then when they find the treasure it's "hidden" in a spot where tourists stroll by every day. After absconding with the treasure McClory and his accomplice "hide" in the warehouse of the city museum! I'm not really sure if there was a deeper reason why this theme was being addressed, but it does also apply to the film's romantic resolutions. Colby ends up with Anna, the first woman he speaks to in the film and one who he expected to sleep with that very night, and Julie ends up with Navarro's son, who she has seemed to take for granted through the entire film. Possibly this is an element that was interesting in the novel but underplayed in the film, I'm really not sure having never read the book.
There are many elements here that will remind the viewer of Huston's "Maltese Falcon" the general theme centered around a stolen cultural artifact, the fat man with mysterious motives (in this case, Francis L. Sullivan), the weird violent guy chasing after the treasure (a bleached blond Sean McClory), etc. And then of course we also have some of the elements that are typical of many suspense films of the 40s/50s (the "noir" kind): the spoiled rich party girl Julie (Diana Lynn), devoted but devious glamour lady Anna (Patricia Medina), and a decidedly ambiguous leading man in Ford's Al Colby.
So essentially we have a not-so-original story set in a very different and more convincing (because it's real) exotic setting, for what it's worth. I really enjoyed the scenes with Colby exploring the ruins when he first arrives in Mexico. Later we find that his character has apparently had a true spiritual epiphany on this occasion although his narrative comments only hint at this and he remains his typical ambiguous self through the rest of the film even going so far as to rob the ruins with the imminently unpleasant archaeologist Jefferson (McClory). This is typical of the problems I see in this film the resolution for the characters seemed in almost every case to be at odds with how they had been established earlier in the film, and there was little in the way of effective development to explain these changes. The film spends so much time building up the Julie character as a hussy from the Gloria Grahame school, but then it blows off all that steam with a lame hospital bedroom confessional scene. I really am not sure what they were trying to do with the Anna character. At times Farrow's direction and the costuming seemed to imply a kind of religious iconography, especially in the scene where Anna enters the room where Colby is arguing with Mexican archaeologist Navarro, with a procession behind her, wearing a kind of veil, and holding a gun in front of her like the rosary you could call her the may queen of death. But the film didn't really establish her very well as either a "fatale" character or a mature partner for the hero like most the characters in this film her actions seem arbitrary and to depend only on the circumstances that the plot demands. Speaking of Navarro, he's so underdeveloped that it's very jarring to find him later having an important impact on the plot's resolution. We don't even get his credit on IMDb, much less on the film itself, so I don't even know who played the role.
Ford's strong characterization provides enough impetus to carry the film along; the writers apparently saw "Gilda" and decided that Glenn Ford would be even more popular if he was a complete misogynist. There are some really fun lines of dialog that he throws out there in his cynical way. I enjoyed the scenes where he devised the code to try to fool Navarro. McClory was also very impressive in a menacing character role. There are numerous small character parts that are all handled with great consistency by director Farrow.
A final note one interesting aspect of this movie is that the various "hiding places" used in the film are all so terribly obvious that it's almost impossible to believe it was accidental. And I believe there was even a line of dialog in the film about the best hiding place being the most obvious one. Thus Ford hides the parchment in his shoes (duh!), with the hotel lobby clerk, etc. And then when they find the treasure it's "hidden" in a spot where tourists stroll by every day. After absconding with the treasure McClory and his accomplice "hide" in the warehouse of the city museum! I'm not really sure if there was a deeper reason why this theme was being addressed, but it does also apply to the film's romantic resolutions. Colby ends up with Anna, the first woman he speaks to in the film and one who he expected to sleep with that very night, and Julie ends up with Navarro's son, who she has seemed to take for granted through the entire film. Possibly this is an element that was interesting in the novel but underplayed in the film, I'm really not sure having never read the book.