When I think of macho leading men of the golden age of Cinema, for some reason I do not think of Van Johnson even though he did his share of war films and action movies during his heyday. In this film, he's oddly cast as a snarling contraband runner, rather cynical and emotionless, smuggling children out of Albania even though he can't stand them. In this film, he's escorting the beautiful Martine Carol from Greece to Albania to find her brother, and in their shared adventures, they find romance and she helps him see the world from a different angle.
Any film that starts off with a scene in the ruins of ancient Greece is certainly going to get your attention, so there are a lot of ooh's and aah's over the mountainous European scenery, mostly filmed in Greece. The film which features four foreign children avoids the cuteness usually associated with films where children are in peril, and the dangers that they face on the road as he attempts to smuggle them out is very real. It looks like that they might cross the paths of communists at any time, so there is some tension among the glorious settings.
long before he was the wisecracking but heroic James Bond, Sean Connery had a cameo in this film, playing Johnson only crew member, attempting to rape Carol in a drunken stupor. Fortunately, the sequence is short, but Connery doesn't get any opportunity to show off the screen magnetism that would make him a major star. The really good supporting performance is by Herbert Lom as Johnson's contact who is the true hero. Johnson gets to come around to become a better person at the end of the film which utilizes a quote from Shakespeare's Henry V to make its point.
Any film that starts off with a scene in the ruins of ancient Greece is certainly going to get your attention, so there are a lot of ooh's and aah's over the mountainous European scenery, mostly filmed in Greece. The film which features four foreign children avoids the cuteness usually associated with films where children are in peril, and the dangers that they face on the road as he attempts to smuggle them out is very real. It looks like that they might cross the paths of communists at any time, so there is some tension among the glorious settings.
long before he was the wisecracking but heroic James Bond, Sean Connery had a cameo in this film, playing Johnson only crew member, attempting to rape Carol in a drunken stupor. Fortunately, the sequence is short, but Connery doesn't get any opportunity to show off the screen magnetism that would make him a major star. The really good supporting performance is by Herbert Lom as Johnson's contact who is the true hero. Johnson gets to come around to become a better person at the end of the film which utilizes a quote from Shakespeare's Henry V to make its point.