That Man from Rio

~ Look what they call a quiet week in Rio! ~

Overview:

French military man Adrien Dufourquet gets an eight-day furlough to visit his fiancée, Agnès. But when he arrives in Paris, he learns that her late father's partner, museum curator Professor Catalan, has just been kidnapped by a group of Amazon tribesmen who have also stolen a priceless statue from the museum. Adrien and Agnès pursue the kidnappers to Brazil, where they learn that the statue is the key to a hidden Amazon treasure.

Director:

Philippe de Broca

Status:

Released

Language:

French

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$0.00

Key words:

kidnapping
spy
rio de janeiro
diamond mine
treasure hunt
amazon rainforest
chased lovers
brazil
brasília, brazil
ancient artifact

Cast

Jean-Paul Belmondo

~ as ~

Adrien Dufourquet

Françoise Dorléac

~ as ~

Agnès Villermosa

Jean Servais

~ as ~

Prof. Norbert Catalan

Simone Renant

~ as ~

Lola

Adolfo Celi

~ as ~

Señor Mario De Castro

Roger Dumas

~ as ~

Lebel

Daniel Ceccaldi

~ as ~

Commissaire

Ubiracy De Oliveira

~ as ~

"Sir Winston"

Milton Ribeiro

~ as ~

Tupac

Lucien Raimbourg

~ as ~

General in wheelchair

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

Wuchak
Written 2 year(s) ago
7
South by Southwest

After a French woman (Françoise Dorléac.) is kidnapped due to her knowledge of a valuable tribal statue, her beau on leave from the military (Jean-Paul Belmondo) relentlessly pursues her from Paris to Rio de Janeiro to Brasília to the Amazon River and the deep jungles nearby. Jean Servais plays a Parisian professor while Adolfo Celi is on hand as a wealthy industrialist in Brasília.

A French-Italian production with subtitles, “That Man from Rio” (1964) is an amusing globetrotting adventure inspired by the Franco-Belgian comics The Adventures of Tintin and intended to be a semi-spoof of flicks like “North by Northwest” (1959), the first two James Bond movies (1962-63) and “Secret of the Incas” (1954). Imagine “North by Northwest” mixed with the fun tone of an Elvis flick minus the songs and you’d have a good idea of this flick.

The scenic globetrotting makes the film, especially the scenes in Brasília, the planned capital city of Brazil with its modernist architecture, which was still under construction when this was shot. Another highlight is the constant entertaining chase sequences.

It influenced the tone of the 70s & early 80’s Bond movies, which added amusing touches to 007’s globetrotting escapades. It also influenced Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981). While entertaining enough, the characters are mostly shallow and uninteresting. Any of the Roger Moore Bond movies is all-around more compelling and rewarding. But this came first and deserves credit.

The film runs 1 hours, 50 minutes, and was shot on location in the places cited above.

GRADE: B/B-