ROPE OF SAND: ever so slightly ropey

I remember a late night three or four years ago, slumped in front of the tv, feeling too lazy to turn it off, get up and go to bed. I'd channel surfed my way to QVC where a super-smiley woman was coming to what was clearly the end of a long stint trying to flog Diamonique jewelry. Having exhausted every other reason why our life would not be complete without at least one piece of  this overpriced fake diamond tat she tried to convince us that it really was impossible to tell the 'ique' from the 'ond' because the 'ique' was made by the same craftsmen who created the 'ond'  jewelry. She explained that they'd work on the Diamonique jewelry after they'd finished polishing and setting their daily workload of diamonds. Without intending to, she painted a mental picture of craftsmen carelessly knocking out a couple of dozen diamonique necklaces in the final five minutes of their shift while they waited for the factory whistle to blow.
I was reminded of this moment while watching ROPE OF SAND, not because the object of lust was diamonds buried in the burning sands of southern Africa, but because the film is a very obvious and cut price effort to emulate the success of 'Casablanca' released six years earlier. 
It's not the story which prompts the comparisons but the cast and the settings. Bogie and Bergman are missing but her long-suffering screen husband Paul Henreid is second billed as the sadistic commandant of a private police force; the unflappably urbane Claude Rains is third billed as his urbane, cynical witticisms spouting boss, while a whiny, seedy Peter Lorre plays the appropriately named Toady. But the 'Casablanca' connections don't end there.
The film's decidedly anti-heroic hero Mike, played by Burt Lancaster, has a black sidekick called John who performs much the same kind of role as Sam did for Rick, minus the piano playing. Mike does the right thing by the heroine, Suzanne, although he insists his passion for her is not the reason why he's doing the right thing, and much of the action takes place in a very exotically dressed cafe-bar-nightclub which resembles 'Rick's Cafe Americain' in everything but name, and where the headwaiter is also called Carl.
And if all that weren't enough,  ROPE OF SAND is produced by Hal Wallis, the genius who brought all of the elements together to create the dazzling diamond that is 'Casablanca'!
So why, with so much going for it, does ROPE OF SAND turn out to be such a glaringly cheap Diamonique-dressed trinket?
Perhaps most importantly, the script has none of the subtlety, intelligence or humour of 'Casablanca.' That film beautifully articulated a moment in time when the world needed a hero like Rick Blaine who could put selfish apathy aside to do the right thing, recognising that his problems didn't amount to a hill of beans. ROPE's story is small, self-centred and unimaginatively written and, frankly there's a limit to what even actors of the calibre of Rains and Lorre can do to rescue a a weak script and direction. 

A consequence of the poor script is a pair of leading characters who are hard to care about. Lancaster's Mike Davis is handsome and athletic but not particularly likable, while Corinne Calvert in her American film debut fails to convince as the streetwise slut who discovers true love the instant she claps eyes on Davis. She has none of Bergman's allure and her character's backstory is not exactly one to elicit much sympathy.
Henreid tries his best to be a convincing bad guy but his heart's just not in it. Maybe that's because he was uncomfortable playing a character other than a suave continental lover, or perhaps it's because he was simply embarrassed at his character's many inconsistencies. 
Lorre is completely wasted in a nonsensical part which is completely superfluous to the story. He may have had an even smaller role in 'Casablanca' but that was an essential one. Without Ugarte's theft of the letters of transit Rick would never have had an opportunity to discover just how noble he could be. 
Ultimately though, the blame lies not with the cast, director or the scriptwriter, but with the producer, Hal Wallis. By 1949 he was a very powerful man in Hollywood with the power to choose his own projects and cast them. He oversaw every aspect of the film's production and he blew it. He was the master crafter of diamond jewelry who thought he could fob us off with a piece of QVC diamonique.