Die fünf verfluchten Gentlemen

With different actors in part, Duvivier made both a French and a German version of this film, which was mostly shot on location in North Africa: Five wealthy young men meet while travelling in Morocco. In Moulay Idriss, they come across a veiled woman with beautiful eyes, who is accompanied by a blind beggar. When one of the men tries to remove the woman’s veil, the beggar pronounces a curse and tells them that they will all die, one by one, before the full moon. Indeed, the first man dies that evening when he falls off a cliff, soon afterwards the second dies in a plane crash, and the third is found stabbed to death near the ruins of a temple. Petersen (Adolf Wohlbrück), the last of the five accursed gentlemen, does everything he can to keep number four (Jack Trevor) alive. (re/fl)