THE CINEMA
How many people, with memories of far-off days when Haggard, Henry and Ballantyne filled every shrubbery with beast or savage, will look to the screen version of King Solomon's Mines for a revival of that early thrill, when a sense of adventure was a sense of life ? At moments the film lives up to this expectation. Material specially shot in Africa by Geoffrey Barkas recreates vividly Twala's mud city and the savage warfare of the Zulus. In the studio Robert Stevenson has created some intelligently directed sequences, notably the crossing of the waterless desert, when similar shots of the footsore, thirsty travellers dissolve one into another and the distant mountains are never nearer. In the mountain caverns also studio ingenuity provides plenty of excitement as the lava spurts and huge rocks crash down on every side. But best of all is the scene where Gagool smells out the evil doers, the Zulus snarl forward with their terrifying chant, and the screams of the victims punctuate the suspense as the little party of whites wait anxiously for the eclipse of the sun. This is the genuine " cauld grue," to be felt by adults as well as schoolboys.
But that is all. The rest of the film suffers severely from the unwarrantable liberties which the scenario department have taken. One would have thought that a plot so naively direct, and characters so simply and clearly conceived, would have been a ready-made scenario to suit all box-office considerations. But no ; there must be a roguish and broguish heroine, whose presence causes the famous figure of Sir Henry Curtis to be watered down into a personable young man with a penchant for wavy hair and smiling eyes. In these parts Anna Lee and John Loder do their best, but never fit the film. Worse still, Paul Robeson—a good choice for Umbopa—is not allowed to exploit his considerable talent as an actor. He must also sing, and we are treated, at one of the more vital moments of the film, to a complete hold-up of the action, while he apostrophises a mountain (with echo effects) in one of the silliest lyrics that ever escaped from the limbo of post-War song scenas. It will not be only the schoolboys who chafe at such ignoble interruptions.
Cedric Hardwicke wears the beard of Quatermain, and Roland Young makes an ideal Captain Good, although, alas, he is permitted to reassume his trousers once the beautiful white legs have established his divinity. The acting honours, however, are all stolen by Robert Adams as King Twala. His commanding presence and his sense of movement make him much more than a storybook chieftain. He presents in full measure the dignity of the noble savage, and it is with real regret one sees him fall before the more civilised axe of Sir Henry Curtis.
If King Solomon's Mines represents the manhandling of a good story, The High Command is an example of the reverse process. It is difficult to understand why this slow and over- complicated plot should have been selected for the first pro- duction of a new company and a new and very promising director. It is much to the credit of Thorold Dickinson that he has made an interesting and at times very dramatic film, although his ingenuity cannot always cover over the ex- planatory longueurs of the story. The scene is a port on the West Coast of Africa, and the director cleverly presents the interplay of feelings between the civil and military sections of the white community. The atmosphere of heat and humidity is well established and backed by well-shot and authentic scenes of landscape and native life. A well-chosen cast is headed by Lionel Atwill, and Steve Geray makes an astonishing and most effective appearance in a serious part. In this connexion we may welcome Mr. Dickinson as one of the few English directors who knows how to handle his actors as well as his cameraman. Without any obvious striving after effect, he achieves in several scenes an intensity of drama worthy of a better film. It is in many ways a textbook of film technique, and not least so in the recording of the sound. Seldom has the perspective between voice and voice or between the little natural sounds of life been so clearly presented. One would like to see what Mr. Dickinson would have made of King
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