The plot is loosely based on a famous murder in 1943 of one Harry Oakes, a Bahamas based gold mine owner and investor. I do not know the details of this case so i will not compare the plot in the movie to the case, I just mention it for accuracy. I had the notion that this was a very good but hard to find movie (just recently reissued by Masters of Cinema), so when i stumbled upon a cheap, second hand, DVD copy, I was eager to watch and review it.
McCann (Hackmann) is a very rich man, living in Bahamas. He found a mountain of gold in 1925, after looking for 15 years. His wife is an alcoholic and his daughter Tracy (Russell) has a fiance Claude (Hauer), that he does not like at all. Further more several of his business relations hates his guts, but he is a very stubborn man and he puts people in their place. He is very skeptical of everyone around him, particularly Claude, who he tries to scare away from his daughter. It is clear that all of the people surrounding him are interesting in getting their hands on some of his wealth one way or another. Then Mccann is killed and mutilated one night and everyone of the suspects seem to have some stake in the deed. During the following trial, nobody is judged guilty, but the daughter ends up with the house and Claude finally leaves her.
This is one of those movies where i sit afterwards thinking ... what was the purpose of this? It felt to me like a messy and confusing story that was unable to bring anything of real depth or interest. It does not have any particularly good acting and when there is acting, it feels too theatrical and bombastic. Now and then there are some bold cinematography, like fast tracking shots and mood setting shots, particularly in the first part, when McCann finds the gold. But in total this thing does not hold together and feels uengaging and therefore quite pretentious. I am having a hard time finding anything about this movie that got to me even a little bit. The only redeeming quality, is the sporadic artistic touches but they can not save a badly executed story.
A big disappointment, and it goes to show that, for me at least, that rumors rarely are reliable sources of inputs for judgement. I try to be true to my own ideas of quality and artistic presentation, so I will never have any problems with giving a movie a low rating despite what everyone else says. This is hardly the one of the important movies in history and frankly, its obscurity is well earned in my opinion.
Rating: 3/10