Captain Blackjack [Black Jack] * (1950, George Sanders, Herbert Marshall, Patricia Roc, Agnes Moorehead) – Classic Movie Review 12,218

Co-writer/ producer/ director Julien Duvivier’s murky and muddled 1950 adventure film Captain Blackjack [Black Jack] tells a tale of hidden identities, smuggling and the cops along the Spanish coast, Unfortunately it is an unworthy vehicle for a quartet of favourite actors (George Sanders, Herbert Marshall, Patricia Roc, Agnes Moorehead) who on a good day were among the cinema’s best character actor stars of the period.

Marcel Dalio, Dennis Wyndham, Howard Vernon and José Nieto are wasted too, and the film fails to fire up and come alive.

George Sanders plays American drugs smuggler Mike Alexander who clashes with trafficker Captain Nikarescu (Marcel Dalio), both tracked by undercover Spanish police Inspector Carnero (José Nieto). Patricia Roc plays Ingrid Dekker, who is in love with Mike while the double-crossing Mrs Emily Birk (Agnes Moorehead) tries to exploit him.

Set and shot on the Mediterranean, the English-language film is a co-production between France, Spain and the US.

This is the story of the filming as recalled by George Sanders. He said it was ‘deficient in what I might call the serious approach to film-making’. The film company had rented a 60-foot cabin cruiser boarded by cast and crew each morning at the yacht club in Palma, on Mallorca. It then cruised around until a suitable location was found, wasting a lot of time and bursting the film’s eight-week schedule.

After five months it was still unfinished and Sanders announced he was quitting, not fully paid for his work. He left for Barcelona, where he was persuaded to return by an assistant director formerly in the Hungarian diplomatic corps. There were then another two more months of filming. There was no happy ending, as it was a little shown financial flop.

The film’s unsatisfying lame ending was enforced as a requirement of the Motion Picture Production Code,

The cast are George Sanders as Mike Alexander, Herbert Marshall as Doctor James Curtis, Patricia Roc as Ingrid Dekker, Agnes Moorehead as Emily Birk, Marcel Dalio as Captain Nicarescu, Dennis Wyndham as Fernando Barrio, Howard Vernon as Schooner Captain, José Nieto as Inspector Carnero, and Jolie Gabor as jeweller.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,218

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