Lotta fun in this '54 opus:
-prototype of Indy Jones in Heston
-beautiful lead actress
-what vistas(ooh mama !)
-strong cast:Young,Mitchell,etc
-50's abandoned innocence sans the censors
-exotic music
-Commie "cold war" theme with the irascible Leon Askin
You hit the nail on the head plwblj - spot on mate!
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
-50's abandoned innocence sans the censors
-Commie "cold war" theme with the irascible Leon Askin
All in all this was a pretty innocent movie
The brief conversation at the airport between Heston and Glenda Farrell when they first meet wasn't all that innocent, hob!
.... and yes, there was a Cold War theme running through the movie. The 'heroine' is a commie whore and the East European gumnan looks, talks, walks, pleads, sweats, smokes, and even begs like a commie.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
There were a few mildly risqué bits of dialogue, Os, but by later standards this was indeed a pretty innocent movie. "Innocent" didn't mean it didn't allude to sexual or other "forbidden" things, but you could find lots of such sly-but-vague references in many post-Code films from 1934 to the late 60s, when the blinkers finally came off. Obviously there was a little give in censorship over the years, but not much.
The OP's statement about "sans censors" makes absolutely no sense whatever. Historically, it's 100% inaccurate. While there was some nudge-and-wink in a few scenes in SOTI, the censors were still in full swing and still bedeviling filmmakers.
There really wasn't a Cold War theme running through the movie. The Commie business was an ultimately meaningless throw-in that was pointless and had little logic. As I said, making Marcu a gangster or some kind of criminal or shady character would have been much more realistic, credible and threatening. We know Elena was a dancer (hooker), reason enough for her boss to pursue her. The story could have had her stealing money from him to escape his clutches, and him in hot pursuit. A person like that would have been vastly more likely to have owned a private plane and given chase. The notion that a Romanian diplomat in Bolivia would own a private plane is completely preposterous. (I'm not even sure Romania had diplomatic relations with some South American countries back then, and even if they did, their diplomatic community would have been tiny and anything but well-funded.)
Add to this that we are never told why they're so determined to get Elena back. That in itself shows just how irrelevant and badly conceived this Commie business is in this film. It would have been easy enough to have invented something. But this lapse, the fact that Marcu is played almost comically and decidedly not threateningly, and this private plane stuff makes the whole Commie thing seem both stupid and contrived, which it emphatically is. The screenwriters just figured that yelling "Red!" in 1954 was enough to prove Elena's virtue. But as a plot point it's ridiculous, incidental and of no importance whatsoever, and it's certainly not a "theme".
hob
The Cold War is often mentioned in SECRET OF THE INCAS reviews. Here is one from Vicpine.
Charlton Heston and Thomas Mitchell play the rivals engaged in a perilous search for a fabled Inca icon in this adventure yarn from director Jerry Hopper. There's romance and Cold War intrigue, so fashionable in 1954, but what distinguishes the film are the location shots of the fabled Inca city of Machu Picchu, which sits swathed in Andean clouds, and nowadays heaves with tourists on day trips from crime-ridden Cuzco.
Machu Picchu was discovered in 1911 by an American adventurer-archaeologist named Hiram Bingham, who was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's whip-wielding hero Indiana Jones.
http://www.secretoftheincas.co.ukhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Hey, hob, if there's no Cold War intrigue in the plot of SOTI, then how do you explain this thread then? http://www.filmstory.org/search?p=4&q=Cold War&f=theme
Just looked again after googling "secret of the incas cold war" and found this lengthy review. If you have the time hob, read it>
http://thisislandrod.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/secret-of-incas-1954.html
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
Os - did you have to link to that damn awful thing by Roderick Heath. He reckons Steele and Morgan secretly had the hots for each other ...
Obtaining Steele’s gun, Morgan lords it over the younger man with a final show of potency, communicating with a mix of smiles and loathing, their words leaping with jarring discursiveness between amity and brutal threat, the two men intimate in their mutual and self-loathing with flickers of both familial and homoerotic feeling too.
What do you think to that then?
It's interesting that Heath mentions GREEN MANSIONS, though. Yma Sumac was pencilled in to play the lead role but Audrey Hepburn eventually got it.
http://www.secretoftheincas.co.ukhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
[deleted]
Boys, boys! Reviewers can mention the Cold War in connection with SOTI ad nauseum, but that still doesn't mean it was a "theme" of the movie. It's totally, completely, all-encompassingly irrelevant to the film's story and purpose.
Yes, of course people would say there's a Cold War aspect to it because of the simple fact that Elena as a refugee being chased by her Romanian overlords is an aspect of the film. That doesn't mean it has anything to do with the basic plot or that it's not contrived.
If Elena were simply a dancer fleeing some thug she used to work for, would that make any substantive difference to any plot development in this film? I'll save you the trouble of answering: No!
And to repeat, if the Commie stuff were so key to this movie, why do we never learn why they're after her? Why is the Marcu interlude so brief? Who is Elena so afraid of meeting that she skulks around all over Cuzco? Legions of rampaging Romanians? What plot point is made by making it Reds instead of, say, gangsters? How does the Communist angle affect the film's story or plot line?
This is why it's contrived nonsense, stuck in explicitly to drag in some vague Cold War balderdash that is thoroughly irrelevant to the plot and is (a) never explained, (b) abruptly resolved (or, more accurately, forgotten), and (c) hopelessly absurd and unrealistic (the private plane and so forth).
On another subject....
Wow! So there's someone who thinks there's a homo-erotic connection between Ed Morgan and Harry Steele? Well, let's see...Ed does make lots of references to how old and fat he is and how envious he is of Harry's youth and vigor (yep, there's a closeted proposition if ever I heard one); he has his hired killer use a rifle (phallic imagery writ large, especially since the assassin is told to make it a near miss, arousing Harry to fury while insinuating the idea of shooting something); and the man he has goo-goo eyes for is, after all, named "Steele", definitely for Ed a thinly-veiled reference to a certain desirable penile condition he can no longer manage. (If Harry's first name had been Rod, Ed would have been creaming all over the place.) Plus one always kills the thing one loves (can't "shoot" our Golden Boy before we get the Golden Sunburst), as Oscar Wilde, a noted fat, aging homosexual, wrote, words Ed Morgan might well have had papered on the wall of his seedy apartment alongside his men's magazine centerfolds. Not to mention that Ed speaks with notable disdain when he mentions Elena, as if he's fobbing Harry off on some girl when all Harry needs is an experienced older man to show him where the real treasure is kept, if you get my drift.
And remember, you can't spell "an erection" without "Incan".
So, yeah, taking into consideration all the established facts, I'd say, absolutely, Secret of the Incas is definitely a gay-subtext film. Even the Cold War thing fits: Harry and Ed carrying on a cold war that suddenly turns hot and Red before bursting. The OP was right about no censors after all! Boy, how'd this slip past them?! Dopes. Oh, one other thing, per our conversation elsewhere about Harry's outfit: let's not forget about all that tight, gorgeous leather!!
Well, there it is. Frankly, I'm surprised at you two. After all your insistence that there's no gay sub-theme in Ben-Hur, here you are hooking up Charlton Heston, determined all-male heterosexual (well, we'd better not stress that "all-male" stuff), with a scruffy old man who's not a patch on Stephen Boyd (whose very name signals his sexual preferences). Who'd've thought? Well, there's no accounting for taste. No wonder Harry didn't need Mrs. Winston or Richie Cunningham's mom. Blow me down!
hob
How could you have missed the homoerotic way in which Harry Steele grabs Ed Morgan's pool cue - and he gives the sniper a good fisting, as well!
And look how seductively Ed Morgan blows the chalk off the end of his cue - it's enough to drive Oscar wild!
http://www.secretoftheincas.co.ukhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
I hope you two are joking!!!!
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
No, no, this is absolutely straight up, Os, well, you know, so to speak.
James, you're right -- the pool cue! The chalk dust blown in Harry's direction. All obvious clues that Ed was trying to "cue" Harry into his intentions, the dust a substitute for cinema's old sexually-suggestive cigarette smoke cliché. Geez, it's all so obvious.
Ed never pays attention to any of the women in the flick either. Watch him. He only has eyes for Harry. Oh, the sunburst too of course...although its color and emanating rays are plainly indicative of his transparent desire to have Harry give him a golden shower as counterpoint to Elena's bath. Easy when you know the answers, isn't it?
And just what did Harry mean when he told Alvy Moore, "I'm bigger than you"? The screenwriters certainly slipped that one past the censors!
Plus all those totems and pillars and towering mountains at Machu (read: "macho") Picchu (subliminally, "pinch you"). Ed sliding down the steep hillside in reality a fall from Harry's favors, a symbolic statement of his being unable to keep it up any longer or long any further.
James, with your site having to be taken down, perhaps we can start a new one dedicated exclusively to the gay themes that simply permeate Secret of the Incas. No legal issues there!
Os, I know we can count on you for lots of heady contributions. Sure, it'll be hard, but don't stop before you're even beaten! This is a firm offer. Please say you won't stiff us!
Oh good, you are joking.
Phew!!!
Look at the way Kori-Tica and the old biddy stare at Elena in the tub. She certainly looks like a carpet muncher in that scene.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no -- no joke. Thanks for reminding us of the lesbian aspects. Much more interesting, broadly speaking. This film is simply drenched with gayness. Probably the Incas' secret.
shareI am actually worried that you aren't joking now hob!
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
Like I said, Os -- if I may quote the character Spottswood in Team America: World Police -- "Oh, I am serious. Look here! This is my serious face."
shareYou guys worry me.
shareAs well we should! Or ought.
share he has his hired killer use a rifle (phallic imagery writ large ....)
Here's some more homo-erotism to send Oswald insane-
Mr Potter slips a phallic shaped cigar to Harry Steele, who then slips it to Charley. You smoke a cigar the same way you smoke a fag.
http://www.secretoftheincas.co.ukhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
You guys worry me.
I'm with you there, Gary.
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
I assume, James, your use of the phrase "smoke a fag" is intended as a double entendre suitable to the project of driving Os nuts on this subject?
The "f-word" has of course an entirely different meaning in the U.S. than it has in the U.K.
Chain-smoking British comedian Peter Cook was asked about his smoking habit on an American tv show, and said, "I'm never without a fag in my mouth," which brought a few seconds stunned silence from the interviewer and audience!
"The internet is for lonely people. People should live." Charlton Heston
Didn't Cook for that reason change the second c in his name to an o?
Hahaha hob, I've only just got it!
Please forgive me, but I'm as thick as two short planks.
The internet is for lonely people. People should live. Charlton Heston
Hey, it only took six months, Os, what are you worried about, mate?
I believe this is an example of what you lot refer to as a "cock-up".
Though what said cock is supposed to be up in is perhaps best left unspoken.
An exemplary subject for Christmas!
Six months to get the joke Oswald ... I suspect yopu should double the amount of planks there, my friend.
shareOh, I don't know, Haddock. I think one plank for every three months is a reasonable calculation. "Tis the season for charity, after all.
Besides, we need every plank we can get to make this board.
hob, I have just re-read this thread and you stated in an earlier post that
"The chalk dust blown in Harry's direction. All obvious clues that Ed was trying to "cue" Harry into his intentions, the dust a substitute for cinema's old sexually-suggestive cigarette smoke cliché".
I cannot make out if you were joking or not, but what is this thing about cigarette smoke being sexually suggestive?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Of course I was joking (I hope!), but that thing about cigarettes and cigarette smoke is as old as the cinema, which for all I know may have invented this notion. I suppose cigarettes are considered phallic (naturally!), and the blowing smoke into someone's face some sort of shared or intimate suggestion of an invitation to share something even more intimate. Plus of course there's the age-old cliché of two people smoking in bed together after coitus. Why that's considered sexy I have no idea, and these days our anti-smoking culture would doubtless frown on it, but traditionally that's a sign of having had sex.
Remember Niagara with Marilyn Monroe? At the very beginning, as Joseph Cotten stumbles back to his cabin after being out all night, there's a shot of MM luxuriating in bed, ostensibly naked beneath a single sheet, rubbing her thighs together, resting on two pillows (one of which she ditches when her husband comes to the door, to emphasize there had been someone sharing her bed), and smoking a cigarette while sporting a look of enjoying the memory of a recent lustful experience. That cigarette is the key element in this highly suggestive scene. Personally, the only butt I would have been interested in in that bed was Marilyn's own.
Marilyn had to learn how to smoke for that scene, but didn't look very realistic in the final print. Like Clinton - she didn't inhale, and consequently resembled some teenager having her first smoke behind the bike shed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
I didn't know that, but come to think of it I never did see Marilyn smoking in any other movie. At least that's one life-threatening habit she managed not to pick up on, curious given the era, when so many smoked. Still, she did it well enough. The more I've seen that scene, the more suggestive and sexy it becomes.
Anyway, for some odd reasons, smoking and sex have long been co-mingled in movies, the former often as an indirect indication of either recent or upcoming sexual interaction. Don't you remember the scene in Airplane! after Elaine the stewardess inflates Otto the automatic pilot -- each of them smoking a cigarette in the aptly named cockpit, with Otto sporting a smug, eyes-half-opened look of sexual conquest?!
Marilyn looked absolutely stunning in Niagara, smokin' hot in fact. Have you been to Niagra Falls, hob?
shareSmokin' hot. Hah! 🚭 👙
No, I've never been to Niagara, even though it's at the other end of my home state. (Still about 12 hours away by car.) Oddly, one of my sisters-in-law flew to Toronto from Britain about a month ago for a conference, and much of it took place in Niagara Falls, Ontario. She said everything was frozen and misty so she wants to come back sometime when the weather is good and the falls are falling.
Frozen and misty. That's why they call it Canada. O!
🇨🇦
I have a pal who is crazy about MM and was most disappointed when she visited Niagara Falls. She went so far as to call it a dump!
The internet is for lonely people. People should live. Charlton Heston
Why did she say they about it? ... it looks beautiful in the brochures.
shareA dump? Granted I haven't been there but that comment is a weird first. Maybe she's alluding to the cheap souvenir stands and the like that inhabit the place on both sides of the divide. But Niagara itself must be beautiful. Or did your friend throw her garbage in the river to see if it bobbed up after going over the falls?
shareI didn't go into why she thought it was a dump, I just assumed the same thing that you reasoned, hob. Every place you go now is full of tat selling foreigners. Even Egypt has a bloody McDonalds next to the pyramids, for Pete's sake!
The internet is for lonely people. People should live. Charlton Heston
Does it have an arch or a crescent?
shareThey even a MacDonald's at Cuzco, Peru, now - which is shocking news. Can you imagine Harry Steele and Ed Morgan munching Big Mac's instead of planning all their intrigue and roguery at the seedy, but atmospheric, El Prado?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
I can imagine Ed, absolutely.
🍔 🍟
Ed Morgan actually looks like the manager of my local McDonald's ... except that he's dressed a lot smarter!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Does the manager of the local Burger King look like Charlton Heston? (Or perhaps Robert Murray?)
shareIf the manageress looked like Nicole Maurey I'd be clinically obese by now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Yeah, but imagine what she'd look like by now.
shareActually, Nicole is in fine shape hope. Considering she was born the same year as Marilyn Monroe, she is still enjoying life to the full and visits her sister in New York every Christmas. If you ever bump into Nicole, give her my best regards will you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
She may be in fine shape, but that's because she wasn't managing a Burger King!
Nicole has a sister who lives in New York? You never told me that. And now that it's after Christmas I'm sure she's gone home, or about to. Maybe next year, if I can find a good French restaurant she might hang out in.
I remember she told you, with some indignity, her birth year was 1926, not the universally reported 1925. That makes her the same age as my mother (and Marilyn). But if memory serves NM's birthday is, like Christmas, also in December.
I bet you have walked past Nicole in the past twenty years or so, and didn't know it hob. How many French restaraunts are there in the Big Apple?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
I kind of doubt it. She probably doesn't frequent the same back alleys I stalk.
How many French restaurants in The Big Apple? Good God, who could count 'em? I only go to the best myself: La grande pomme of course; Le garçon vulgaire for the service; L'americain stupid, a fine beanery boasting the traditional Gallic regard for citizens of the United States.
🍎
🇫🇷🇺🇸
Everyone thinks the word "bistro" is French -- mais, non! It's Russian. It means "quickly". Its bastardization into French stems from the boorish behavior of the Russian nobility when they visited Paris in the 19th century. They found the waiters at Parisian restaurants particularly slow and slovenly, and in their own display of civility, used to pound their tables yelling, "Bistro! Bistro!" (Pronounced, approximately, "BWIS-tra".) They intended to compel their servers to serve more speedily, but instead bequeathed a name to street corner cafés the world over. Without a marked improvement in service, I hasten to add.
Believe it or not, I never heard the word in my life until I learned Russian at 15. My family never dined anyplace that didn't serve your meal in a bucket.
🐔
hob - I reckon you are the cleverest bloke on the internet!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
What's the internet?
shareIf used properly - a great place to learn new things, hob!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Great! I'm hitting the porn sites! 👯
shareDon't let the missus catch you, hob. They hate to see husbands enjoying themselves!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
Yeah, especially since I found her "dating" site. I wondered where all that extra income was coming from.
shareAre her rates reasonable?
Does it include "extras"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhSPcAyCgwE
"No", and "all you want".
And she does maintain a UK bank account for easy cash transfers.
She learned much from Elena Antonescu.