Sunday night I watched a mid 60s adventure film Sands of the Kalahari about a small charter aircraft that after encountering a locus swarm crashes in the Kalahari Desert and the 6 survivors struggling to overcome the harsh condition. The surviving passengers and pilot are five men and one woman played by Susannah York.

York’s role hardly qualifies as a ‘character.’ Each of the men have clearly defined personalities complete with motivations and goals while nothing at all motivates York’s Grace beyond sexual attraction. Though she was a paying passenger aboard the hastily convened flight, the regular commercial flight has been delayed overnight and the passengers commissioned this trip rather than wait in a hotel, Grace during the trip serves all the other passengers their coffee.

Once they have crashed and found refuge in a set of caves, she is attacked by the pilot who has claimed her as his sexual right by being the ‘leader’ of their band. Despite descending into savagery less than 48 hours after the crash the pilot does not in fact rape her because she’s doesn’t participate in her own sexual assault. The pilot then leaves the camp on a trek intending the cross the desert on foot and get rescue for the others.

Grace sexually fixates on the big game hunter among them having decided less than a day after escaping sexual assault that she loves this manly man. However, their assignation fails to complete when she is unable to get him to admit any ‘love’ for her at all and she rejects him. Later she changes her mind, apologizes for wanting him to love her, and simply gives herself over to him. For the rest of the film, we are expected to believe that she is torn between he-man she ‘loves’ and the growing truth that he has murdered some of the other survivors to increase his own chance of making it out. Grace has no character, no arc, no backstory, and contributes nothing to the groups survival other than cooking meals from the game the men have trapped and hunted. Her ‘character; could be replaced with a blow-up sex toy and it would have no impact on the plot.

Sands of the Kalahari is currently streaming on Paramount+.