Sirocco

One of clutch of films made for Columbia by Bogart’s own production company, Santana (also the name of his yacht), the others being Knock On Any Door (1949), Tokyo Joe (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), and Beat the Devil (1954), this time Bogey plays Harry Smith, a gun-runner for the Syrians who are smarting under French Occupation during the 1920s, jousting with military intelligence officer, Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) and making moves on the colonel's mistress (Märta Torén).

Just as Tokyo Joe was a failed attempt to recreate Casablanca (1942, Sirocco (a title which has no apparent trace in the film itself) yet again takes the world-weary character, who with each installment grows more disreputable, and with barely a change of wardrobe whacks him in another Middle Eastern location, caught between warring factions and involved with another (honourable) man’s woman. The only thing missing from the formula was a hit tune (we do get a nightclub number but it’s a belly dance).

Curtis Bernhardt does a slightly better job that Stuart Heisler did with Tokyo Joe and there are moments when the dialogue crackles but many more when it does not and making Torén's Violette a morally dubious character was not a good decision, aside from the fact that there is not a spark of warmth between her and Bogart. Were it not for Bogey lending his star value (and evidently having a problem with his salivary glands) this would be pure Saturday matinee stuff. Lee J. Cobb is ludicrously mis-cast as an idealistic French army officer and there's the standard gaggle of nuggeted extras playing swarthy Arabs.

 

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