646f9e108c In 1940 Col. Dufort arrives in Timbuktu with his wife to take over the French garrison. This garrison is threatened by a Tuareg uprising supposedly inspired by Mohamet Adjani – a holy man once regardeda friend of France. Almost immediately Col. and Mme. Dufort push on to Bou Djebeha in company with an American gunrunner named Mike Conway who soon engages the Colonel&#39;s wife in a forbidden romance. At Bou Djebeha Conway learns that the holy man has been kidnapped by an evil Emir who is the true force behind the rebellion. Complications and dangers ensueConway and the Colonel try to get the holy man back to Timbuktu so that he can speak out against the rebellion. One of the poorest areas on the globe yet its very name conjures up exotic places of the past, Timbuktu the city servesthe title for a routine action/adventure film starring Victor Mature. Interesting that it came out when it didthe French were busy grappling with losing their colonial empire of which Timbuktu was a part. At that time it was a part of French West Africa though the name Soudan for the region is used and correctly.<br/><br/>Victor Mature plays a smuggler of no particular loyalties who is doing business with whomever in the regiona new commander of the garrison at Timbuktu comes to take over. George Dolenz is unhappy with being sent out of France during the hour of her greatest peril in 1940, but somebody&#39;s needed to keep the Tuareg tribes in line.<br/><br/>Who are threatening a revolt under the leadership of Emir John Dehner and who has a local mullah in Leonard Mudie held captive and under his thumb. Dehner wants to use the mullah&#39;s influence to incite a revolt. Sounds very familiar for today&#39;s audience.<br/><br/>While all the politics is going on Mature is also checking out Yvonne DeCarlo and who could blame him. However Timbuktu comes nowhere neargoodthat other wartime classic with the name of a city set in French colonial Africa, Casablanca. No one will ever mistake Mature and DeCarlo for Bogey and Bergman.<br/><br/>Still the film should please fans of Victor Mature although his work declined after he left 20th Century Fox. An Imperial Picture. Released through United Artists. Copyright 1959 by United Artists Corporation. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: October 1959. U.K. release: 14 December 1958 (sic). Australian release: 21 May 1959. 8,205 feet. 91 minutes.<br/><br/>COMPLETE SYNOPSIS: French Sudan during World War II. A seething cauldron of intrigue and violence,nationalist natives try to wrest independence from France, prostrated under the heel of Nazi occupation. In this atmosphere, an American gun-runner (Victor Mature) actsa go-between, the only individual acceptable at the same time to the French commandant (George Dolenz), the independence-seeking emir (John Dehner), and the great peace-loving Arab leader, Mohamet Adai (Leonard Mudie). While suspected by each side of favoring the other, the American succeeds in treading a middle road, carrying information to one side or the otherit suits his purposes. To try to keep the peace, he must unveil the plotting of the Emir, and to do this he must convince him that he is against the French. His best way of convincing the Emir is to get him to believe that the American is in love with the wife of the French commandant (Yvonne de Carlo) and thus has a personal basis for hating him, apart from considerations of gain or patriotism. The commandant and his wife lend themselves to this frame-up, and through it the local plot is foiled. But not before many of the French soldiers have been barbarically tortured, others killed in ambush, and the commandant finally fallen in battle. When peace is restored and the American and the commandant&#39;s widow ride off across the desert, it is apparent that what starteda trick to foil the native plot has blossomed into a real romance.<br/><br/>COMMENT: Although contemporary reviewers hated it, I found this to be most entertaining, desert-adventure hokum, well up to director Jacques Tourneur&#39;s usual vigorously-paced standard. Tourneur&#39;s splendid efforts are abetted by breezy dialogue and a most agreeable cast. <br/><br/>Victor Mature is in especially good form, and runs through his paces with a charmingly light touch. The action is well-staged, though arbitrary insertion of close-ups often detracts from the pace and atmosphere. Miss De Carlo looks attractive, but plays her role perfectly straight -does George Dolenz. But Mature, Dehner, the villains and director Tourneur have a ball.<br/><br/>Production values are first-class. Miss De Carlo&#39;s husband, Bob Morgan, performs some spectacular stunts including a forty-foot leap from the highest perch of a minaret, and an even lengthier fall down the staircase inside.
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