Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

clanciai After a row of the most subtle and sensitive love films ever made in Hollywood, William Dieterle resorted to this brutal and primitive drama of greed in the deserts of Kalahari. The actors are all superb (except Corinne Calvet, who is a failure and never even convincing as such,) but the script is lacking in any human credibility. Such an eloquent actor as Paul Henreid is made to play a sadistic villain without any human nuances, and Burt Lancaster is mostly used to apply his knuckles. The only good performance is Claude Rains, whose relevant cynicism in this dreadful study in greed is all too convincing. Sam Jaffe and Peter Lorre add some sympathy by their decadent characters but not much and far from enough to make this film interesting in any other way than photographically. Only Franz Waxman's fantastic music makes it endurable at all. Sorry about that, Mr Dieterle. Your previous masterpieces made us expect more of you than this sordid B-melodrama.

gavin6942 A man (Burt Lancaster) abused by a sadistic mining company cop (Paul Henreid) before he could tell where on their desert property he had found diamonds decides to steal them instead.Glenn Erickson reflected on the background of the film and how it was received when first released, "Although William Dieterle's direction is capable, the script works too hard to introduce an overly familiar collection of stock thriller types ... Critics generally liked Lancaster's performance, even if they slighted the work of Claude Rains and Peter Lorre and saved the bulk of their praise for Paul Henried's nasty villain." Indeed, those who watch the film for Lorre may be disappointed on little screen time he receives.Reflecting decades later, Burt Lancaster singled this out as his least favorite film. That was due to personal reasons, however, so may not necessarily reflect whether this was (in his opinion) his worst performance.

madmonkmcghee What a great cast, what a top director and what a disappointing movie. I blame the script, or rather lack of one, cause nobody involved seems to quite know what it is all about. Something about diamonds? That'll do, let's start filming. Famously Casablanca was already in production without a finished script, and look how well that turned out, right? Just put some of that cast in another exotic location and Fate and sheer acting talent, aided by some stylish camera-work will do the rest. Alas, it didn't. The muddled story limps along from scene to tepid scene, the plot holes are abundant and the Great Romance never convinces for a moment. I kept hoping the story would catch fire at some point, but it never does. Will Paul Henreid turn out to be a Nazi war criminal? Where did Peter Lorre wander off to? Does Claude Rains have any aces up his sleeve? Why would anybody believe the girl killed the doctor? Is she a former member of the French Resistance, set out to kill Vogel? Wouldn't that sorta spice up this bland story? Nah, it turns out everybody is just what they appear to be. With some solid script doctoring this could have become a great adventure movie. Shame.

parker_nightengale Rope of Sand, an adventure thriller supposedly set in post-WW II South Africa, certainly receives the vote of "classic" in my book. Far away places, a romance triangle, suspense, even a bit of humor at times...it's all there in a neatly executed, well-acted plot that makes you wish YOU could have been there and tried just what Burt Lancaster did. I have watched this movie more than half a dozen times over the years and still get that sense of intrigue and mystery and fascination with the setting and story that I got on the first occasion, as a child. The film noir era was coming to a close when this movie was created in 1949 but most of the crucial elements are there including use of the black and white, music score, contrasting dialog and action scenes, and so on, right up to the final scene. Perhaps the screenplay might have gotten a little more mileage out of Corrine Calvet and Burt but we need to remember that we're judging films of this era against a different yardstick. I seriously don't think that this movie would have come together at all using actors working today because they would all be hungering for a bigger piece of the movie than anyone got here or typically does get in film noir. This is not to mention what current directors typically do as a substitute for what film noir did with the camera and timing of scene combinations. So I disagree with the previous reviewer. Watch this if you can and enjoy!