Inspiration comes in all forms. Sometimes it’s a post to Instagram celebrating International Pisco Sour Day 😉
My dad and I loved to watch adventure movies together. While Journey to the Centre of the Earth has always been my favourite from our virtual Sunday escapades, another movie that really stuck in my head, though it’s become obscure now, was 1954’s Secret of the Incas. To my young mind, it held so much mystery, with its on-location filming in Cuzco and on Machu Picchu, and so much swash. And the most memorable part, I guess because it seemed so sophisticated and exotic: the Pisco Sour, imbibed by the hardened adventurer Harry Steele and all the travellers to Cuzco in a low-key bar full of atmosphere.
It’s amazing what resonates with you. I grew up really wanting to visit to Peru, and above all to have that cocktail.
Adventure movies in the middle of winter, when it’s too cold to leave the house, are a great form of escapism. We watch the heroes/heroines romp through mountains and temples and raging rivers, finding golden statues and dodging cunning traps.
I love the films made in the earlier days of Hollywood – pure pleasure to watch, not to be taken too seriously, just a jungle Jeep or Pan-Am Clipper full of fun. I think would have loved to travel in those days, when the journey itself was a great part of the adventure, but I have to make do with watching the movies.
So for your viewing pleasure, I offer up a movie that heavily inspired the look of a much later intrepid hero named Indiana Jones. As soon as you see Harry Steele, played by Charlton Heston, walk around with his fedora and leather jacket, you’ll know I mean.
The costume designer for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Deborah Nadoolman Landis, confirmed that the crew watched Secret of the Incas several times and definitely drew inspiration. She even said that the film was “almost a shot for shot Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
Harry Steele isn’t an archaeologist, however. He’s self-serving and not overly scrupulous tourist guide around Cuzco, the one-time capital of the Inca empire, cradled by the Andes Mountains and steeped in sacred sites. The motivation behind everything he does is to find a fabled treasure, a golden, jewelled Inca “sunburst”, rumoured to be somewhere in the ancient citadel of Machu Picchu. His direct competition is bar owner Ed Morgan, who’s been searching for the sunburst himself for fourteen years. Now Ed’s older, grizzled and increasingly desperate to fulfill his longtime wish before he dies.
Harry’s advantage is that he has a piece of an artifact that fits into a carved stone model of Machu Picchu in a Cuzco museum, showing the location of the sunburst. All he needs is the means to get up there, which he unexpectedly stumbles across when he decides to help a beautiful woman named Elena Antonescu, a Romanian defector who’s travelling illegally and is being pursued by an official with a small airplane. In her own desperation, she agrees to help Harry steal the plane, thinking that he’s taking her to Mexico
Diverting to Machu Picchu, he and Elena find an archaeological expedition preparing to enter the tomb where the sunburst is supposedly concealed. Harry invents a reason to stay, Ed Morgan tracks them down, the archaeologist falls for Elena, and the fun continues as each player pursues their own desires. I won’t spill the rest.
The movie was filmed on location, and when I watch it now and I can readily recognize the same parts of Cuzco that my hubby and I walked around. It was one of our favourite places in Peru, cradled in the Sacred Valley high in the Andes (at about 11,000 feet, it takes some acclimation). It’s fun to see it as it was seventy-odd years ago, with prop planes flying in and landing on dirt airstrips, and a rudimentary railroad switch-backing across the main road.
And we get to see Machu Picchu in a more raw state, not as pristinely excavated as it is now and full of mystery.
To get to the ancient site, Harry and Elena abandon the plane, raft down the Urubamba River, and hike four thousand feet up the mountain, which Elena remarkably accomplishes in a skirt and pumps with heels. Ahh, Hollywood. Nevertheless, the scenery is as spectacular as when we were there and will give you a real sense of the enigmatic city in the clouds.
Five hundred indigenous people were used as extras in the movie, and plenty of local llamas as well 😉. Peruvian-born singer Yma Sumac, herself of Indian-Spanish descent, inspired writer Sidney Boehm with the idea for the movie after he met her at a party. She was very popular in Hollywood at the time, with her exoticism and powerful voice, and made her screen debut in the film.
You can watch the entire movie on Youtube, or purchase it on Amazon Prime. If you can find some Pisco brandy at the liquor store, you can fix yourself some Piscos, put on your old fedora, put up your feet and escape into a wild adventure in Peru for a couple of hours.
