Henri Verneuil directed Greed in the Sun (French: Cent mille dollars au soleil), a French-Italian crime adventure, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura.
Director Verneuil said the film was “a Western, but since in France we don’t have horses, I use trucks. I give Jean Paul the hat, blue jeans, boots of a cowboy. He’s one of the few young actors in France who is young and manly.”
Narrative Structure:
The forwarder Castigliano (Gert Fröbe) instructs Steiner to drive a new truck with a payload through the Sahara Desert. As Steiner is new to the operation, he is viewed with suspicion by the other employees.
In the evening, Steiner goes out with Rocco (Belmondo), Marec (Ventura), and colleagues. The next morning the truck is gone. Castigliano is furious and orders Marec to retrieve the truck which was stolen by Rocco.
Rocco and girlfriend Pepa head towards the border, and wild chase begins through the deserts.
Marec travels with Steiner, who, it turns out is actually called Frocht; he was the leader of a band of mercenaries in coup d’état. Rocco succeeds in shaking off Marec several times.
After leaving Marec and Steiner stranded in the desert, Rocco tries to sell the cargo for $100,000 to a fence.
Marec and Steiner make it to the next town, where Marec abandons Steiner.
A wild brawl erupts, and when they are both too weak to beat each other up further, Rocco admits that he showed up to the rendezvous with the fence but the fence was not there.
When he came back to the hotel, he discovered that Pepa had made off with the truck and the payload.
The film was a box office hit in France, where it was the seventh most popular film of the year.
The film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Fest.
Cast
Jean-Paul Belmondo as Rocco
Lino Ventura as Hervé Marec
Reginald Kernan [fr] as John Steiner (alias Peter Frocht)
Bernard Blier as Mitch-Mitch
Andréa Parisy as Pepa
Gert Fröbe as Castigliano
Anne-Marie Coffinet [fr] as Angèle
Doudou Babet [fr] as Khenouche
Pierre Mirat [fr] as Halibi
Henri Lambert as Robert, a guest at “Chez Zeze”
Pierre Collet as one of Castigliano’s workers
Christian Brocard [fr]
Paul Bonifas
Films Directed by Henri Verneuil
Forbidden Fruit (1952)
The Most Wanted Man (1953)
The Sheep Has Five Legs (1954)
The Lovers of Lisbon (1955)
Paris, Palace Hotel (1956)
A Kiss for a Killer (1957)
Maxime (1958)
The Cow and I (1959)
The President (1961)
The Lions Are Loose (1961)
A Monkey in Winter (1962)
Any Number Can Win (1963)
Greed in the Sun (1964)
Weekend at Dunkirk (1964)
The 25th Hour (1967)
Guns for San Sebastian (1968)
The Sicilian Clan (1969)
The Burglars (1971)
Night Flight from Moscow (1973)
Fear Over the City (1975)
Body of My Enemy (1976)
I as in Icarus (1979)
A Thousand Billion Dollars (1982)
Les Morfalous (1984)
Mother (1991)
588 rue paradis (1992)
