Review of Fortune in Diamonds

A poor - quality print shown on FilmFour the other night did this movie no good at all.Even in it's pristine 1951 form it was not much more than a"programmer" although Ossie Morris's photography lifted it slightly out of the rut.Jack Hawkins played a decent chap(although a Boer) and Dennis Price a cad.Gregoire Aslan - born to play bartenders, suspicious foreigners or club owners in British'B' pictures right up to the late 60s - has a decent sized part as a suspicious foreign bar tender/club owner. Blacks - -where they appear at all - are shown as idle,subservient and feckless.There is no sense that the movie is in fact set in their country. In other words,"The Adventurers"(a misnomer if there ever was one)is a product of its time.Think Festival of Britain,the death of King George VIth,the Korean War.All events receding into history along with the attitudes expressed in this movie set at the turn of the 20th Century but made fifty years later at a time when in fact very little had changed in South Africa since the time of the Boers. A sub Graham Greene tale of thwarted love creates little of a stir.Dennis Price looks bored with the whole thing and Jack Hawkins has "The Cruel Sea" just around the corner. It is to be hoped that a few weeks away from the gloom and austerity of post - war Britain gave the cast heart for better things to come. Certainly "The Adventurers " was a nadir that most of them happily escaped from.