In short: Star of India (1954)

After five years of war in India, French country squire Pierre St. Laurent (Cornel Wilde) returns to his home only to now find it the property of a widowed Dutch countess named Katrina (Jean Wallace). Governor Narbonne, the man responsible (and clearly evil because he is played by Herbert Lom) took Pierre’s home and estates for unpaid back taxes and sold them off, or so he says. He also offers no recourse (and certainly no apologies) to the rather incensed soldier.

Katrina, on the other hand, does. Apparently, another bit of bad business instigated by the Governor not only left her husband dead in a duel with the man, but also put the villain’s grubby hands on a family jewel that means rather a lot to her. Right now, it is hidden in a pretty tacky looking “Indian” statuette in Narbonne’s office. If Pierre would agree to, ahem, reacquire the jewel for Katrina, she’d pay him by giving him back everything that belonged to him. Obviously, the good lady might by leaving out some pertinent facts Pierre will learn in due course while swashbuckling, and sometimes scheming his way back to his proper home and hearth, and of course into Katrina’s heart.

While not a top tier swashbuckler, this Cornel Wilde vehicle directed by Arthur Lubin is often very good fun, featuring very satisfying amounts of fencing and intrigue, though not quite enough romance, for Katrina is basically non-existent for much of the plot between the first act and the finale.

The plot is mostly a somewhat obvious developed series of moves, feints, and reversals of exactly the kind you’d expect from a genre in which the plotting does quite appropriately tend to take on the quality of a fencing match. Yet despite being obvious, it’s also nearly always fun and develops in a good pace.

Rather more surprising is that this is a movie about a swashbuckling hero acquiring foreign loot to put it in the hand of a group that wants to put it back where it belongs (apparently to guarantee peace in India), not at all a move typical for this sort of thing, and certainly rather likeable.

As is much of the film, really. Wilde, despite generally getting a bit stiff in the intrigue and dialogue bits (as usual), was the kind of actor at least putting extra effort into those parts of his performances that didn’t come natural, and always did some convincing swashbuckling, too. Lom is always a delightful villain, in this particular case a guy who always seems completely outraged by the idea that anyone could try to pull any of the sort of dirty tricks he enjoys on him, which is the sort thing that makes a villain fun.