The Big Gamble (20th Century-Fox) is a picture in which the central character is a truck, the story line is a dirt road, the scriptwriter (Irwin Shaw) runs out of gas, the actors (Stephen Boyd, Juliette Greco, David Wayne) have no spark, the director (Richard Fleisher) falls asleep at the wheel, and the producer (Darryl Zanuck) is going downhill. The spectator can hardly be blamed for speeding to the nearest exit.
Intended as a sort of African Queen on wheels, the film tells how a poor young Irishman (Boyd) and his Corsican bride (Greco), who despite her poverty slinks around in a...