Nazis and man-eating dogs are chasing you through the jungle, but the real question is, do you really know the person running by your side? 1956's Run for the Sun sort of half-heartedly maintains a theme of truth in romance, the main appeal of the film being its production values, performances, and suspense. I'm not sure if the weak link is director Roy Boulting or screenwriter Dudley Nichols. A lack of chemistry between stars Richard Widmark and Jane Greer may also be at fault. But there's plenty to admire here. I could take a million screenshots that look like individual pulp covers.
The whole film was shot on location in Mexico, with much of it in jungles near Acapulco. Even the soundstage interiors were reportedly shot on Mexican soundstages. And they're well lit by cinematographer Joseph La Shelle.
That's not rear projection, Greer is in a real car in real Mexico.
The film begins with a magazine reporter, Katie (Greer), tracking down the reclusive novelist, Mike Latimer (Widmark), to where he's living, integrated into the life of a Mexican fishing village.
Mike spends his evenings in bed with a bottle, torturing himself about his inability to find truth in his writing, the character clearly being based on Hemingway. There's the start of something interesting in his inability to trust any perception of truth after his wife left him for another man but somehow this theme doesn't quite get off the ground.
Katie can't go through with her assignment to write a nasty expose on Mike. He insists on flying her to Mexico City in his little yellow plane. Unbeknownst to him, she has a magnetised notebook in her purse which she sets next to the dashboard compass, not realising she's throwing the two of them off course. I guess Mike can't even trust the laws of magnetism. If we take the purse to symbolise what it usually did for Hitchcock, a vagina, this plot detail becomes a little more interesting. What could throw Mike off-course into hot, steamy wilderness?
Individually, Widmark and Greer are fine, but there's just no sense of passion between the two. They certainly look passionate, hacking their way through foliage and muck.
Just look at that cinematography; all the shadows of those leaves and how subtly the eye is drawn to Greer's face.
The villain, played by Trevor Howard, somehow works out to be much more fascinating. He tries to conceal his true identity as a Nazi behind a natural geniality, but there's always a kind of carnivorous intensity in his eyes.
Run for the Sun is available on Amazon Prime.
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