Plunder of the Sun (1953)

August 26, 1953, release date

Directed by John Farrow

Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer

Based on the novel Plunder of the Sun by David F. Dodge

Music by Antonio Diaz Conde

Edited by Harry Marker

Cinematography by Jack Draper

Glenn Ford as Al Colby/narrator

Diana Lynn as Julie Barnes

Patricia Medina as Anna Luz

Francis L. Sullivan as Thomas Berrien

Sean McClory as Jefferson

Eduardo Noriega as Raul Cornejo

Julio Villarreal as Ulbaldo Navarro

Charles Rooner as Captain Bergman

Douglass Dumbrille as the consul

Distributed by Warner Bros.

Produced by Wayne-Fellows Productions, Inc.

I wrote recently about a B film, Railroaded! (click here for my post), that was probably a lot of fun to watch on a Saturday afternoon at the movies, and I feel the same way about Plunder of the Sun. It reminds me of the kind of film I might have watched on television years ago on a weekday afternoon after school. It also happens to star one of my film noir favorites: Glenn Ford.

The film opens with Al Colby (played by Ford), an insurance adjustor and resident of San Francisco, California, in an interrogation conducted by Mexican officials. Colby says that he made a big mistake trying to collect a debt in Cuba and that he doesn’t know anything about a trail of bodies. The officials remind him that he is a guest of Oaxaca, Mexico, that he is a tourist, and they want to know who owns the two guns that they found with Colby. At that moment, members of the United States consul show up, and they ask Colby if he wants to tell his story to them. He agrees. He really doesn’t have much choice because he won’t leave Mexico otherwise. He tells his story in flashback, and it starts a week earlier, in Havana, Cuba.

In Havana, Colby is waiting for a letter, and for money, so that he can pay his bills, including his hotel bill. He’s broke and needs the money to return home. Nothing arrives in the mail that day, and he leaves his hotel and goes to a bar, presumably to drown his sorrows. A woman sitting next to him at the bar starts talking: “Without him, it’s impossible to live. Without him, I can’t live. His kisses, I can never forget. His laughter will forever torment me. It’s useless to try and resist. Because without him, I can’t live.” She’s translating a song that a woman in the bar is singing in Spanish, but that’s not quite clear at first, and Colby—and viewers, too—wonder from the start about this woman and her intentions.

Colby is in Cuba, a tropical locale, with an exotic woman sitting next to him. He’s not immune to her charms, and she lures him into what seems at first to be a strange conversation, in typical femme fatale fashion. After it becomes obvious that she is translating the words of the singer’s song, they start a conversation, some of which reinforces the idea—at least for viewers—that Colby has just met a femme fatale:

• Anna Luz: “. . . I’ve been in Havana for three months, and I haven’t been out after dark.”

• Al Colby: “And what did you do before that?”

• Anna Luz: “Does it matter?”

• Al Colby: “No, I guess not.”

Anna Luz tells Colby that she has no last name, which adds to the mystery surrounding her. It should set off alarms for Colby, but she convinces him to go to her home with her. She leads Colby to Thomas Berrien, who offers him a proposition and $1,000: He wants Colby to leave Havana on the freighter Cinco de Mayo heading for Mexico and take a small package on board. The package contains an antique that was smuggled out of Mexico. Berrien bought it in Havana, and he wants Colby to smuggle it back into Mexico so Berrien can say that he bought it in Mexico.

Colby agrees to the proposition because he is desperate to return home and needs the money to do so. Once he is on the freighter, however, the mystery deepens. By now, Colby is well aware that he is in danger. In voice-over narration, he states as much for viewers:

“. . . It had been a good day. I’d made three, maybe four bosom enemies, rejected a pass from a pretty blond [a stranger on the freighter], and latched onto a half-interest in a package that might contain, for all I know, some pages of an old Sears Roebuck catalog. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that there was trouble ahead. I went to my cabin, found that I was right.”

From that point onward, Colby has to navigate through the cutthroat world of stolen antiquities. On the freighter and in Mexico, he meets numerous strangers, and he has to decide who to trust while figuring out his role in the intrigue.

All that I have described so far happens fairly early in the film, and I have not given away any surprises in the plot (no spoilers for Plunder in the Sun) because the plot is straightforward and I don’t want to ruin the fun. If you watch the DVD version of the film, I recommend the DVD commentary with Peter Ford (Glenn Ford’s son) and Frank Thompson, a writer and film historian. They provide lots of interesting details; here are a few examples:

◊ Plunder of the Sun was filmed on location in Oaxaca, Mexico. The Havana scenes and the indoor hotel scenes in Mexico were filmed in a Mexican film studio: Churubusco-Azteca Studios.

◊ The on-location shooting (among the ruins in Mexico) was still fairly unusual. Today, such shooting probably wouldn’t be allowed on historical sites.

◊ Sean McClory plays Jefferson, and it was not one of his typical roles. (I had not seen him in a film before and wouldn’t have known the difference!)

◊ Glenn Ford could be Humphrey Bogart, Sean McClory could be Peter Lorre, Francis L. Sullivan could be Sydney Greenstreet, and you would have The Maltese Falcon.

◊ Glenn Ford did his own stunts. Peter Ford said that his father felt he should do his own stunts, that if he couldn’t do them himself, he shouldn’t be in the film. He enjoyed the physical challenges of an acting role.

I’m not a big fan of categories, and some might argue that Plunder of the Sun is really an adventure film, not a film noir. My answer to that, as always, is that the film can belong to more than one category. Plunder of the Sun does have several noir characteristics: the use of flashback; the femme fatale who pulls Colby into the plot; the constant intrigue and sense of danger; murder and the threat of murder, especially for Colby. However you want to categorize it, Plunder of the Sun is a fun way to spend eighty-one minutes.