 |
 Leslie Banks plays a guy that rules the "river district of West Africa" and
represents the British Crown. Paul Robeson is given the job of chief by Banks
and it turns out to be a good one when he thwarts a band of slave traders.
Now, with Banks on leave, they return and try and conquer the village and it is
up to Banks to return and "save the community he worked so hard to build." They
claim that The New York Times once said that this movie had a "skillful performance by Leslie Banks." 1935, 90 minutes, VHS
You would think that a movie starring a dude that had his face all paralyzed
and disfigured in World War I and another guy who was a famous commie singer
would feature the non-stop action of a carnival sideshow around closing time,
but instead turns into one of those "dark continent" movies where natives spend
most of their time beating war drums and doing various dances (the Killing
Dance, the Lion Dance, the Tush Push) while their wise and benevolent white
rulers try to keep them in line like they were running an Africa-sized day care
center. Edgar Wallace, the author of the novel this British imperialist wet
dream is based on was supposedly quite the best seller of the day. He churned
out almost 200 novels and was supposedly second in bestsellerdom behind only
the Bible. He was one of those blokes who thought the sun never set on the
British Empire and this movie is just another example of that uncritical line
of thinking. I only regret that Mr. Wallace is no longer with us, because I
would like to see what kind pro-colonialist garbage he could spew forth what
with his country being reduced to a joke in a George Michael video. Luckily
for most of us, we don't live in England so we either are proud to be a real
superpower still (if you're American) or we don't know the shame of having an
empire, losing it, and slipping into mid-card country status (unless you're
Russian or something). The British though, have to live with the fact that
they stuck their nose in and screwed up countries that stretched as far afield
as
India, Pakistan, Africa, and Canada, for no good reason. I suppose that good
little Englanders (or Vickies as I call 'em) can choke down their kidney pie
through their yellow teeth and watch this film with a misty-eyed nostalgia for
the "good old days". The rest of us will simply sit through it, never
realizing how much we enjoyed all those old Tarzan films until we had to endure
this pretty boring episode of colonial life in the thriving backwater of
Nigeria where everything depended on a civil servant everyone called "Sandy"
(ouch!) and a native chief called Bosambo (Double ouch!).  I was hoping that I could find some information about the making of this movie,
not because I was hoping for some rumors of a slap fight between the freakishly
hideous Leslie Banks and a guy so un-American that they put his passport on
suspension during the mid-fifties (Hell, I say love it or leave it, right?),
but because I was curious to see whether anyone left their British soundstage
and how much of everything was really just stock footage they stole from some
scientists and/or big game hunters. Sometimes there would be these scenes of
natives paddling around in their war canoes or whatever and then I'd get a
close up of Robeson singing some awful and distinctly Broadway-style showtune
aboard one of these boats, except that the boat and everyone in it were really
just projected behind him. That's okay, because they probably didn't want to
hear him anyway. He probably would've just handed out pamphlets for the fifth
column or something. I'm not saying the guy couldn't sing or nothing - heck I
forced the old lady to sit through a good portion of Showboat just to hear Old
Man River (and I don't even think Robeson was in that version), but he never
does sing that signature tune in this movie and mainly just sings about stuff
like killing, drums, cattle, and what a great and wise leader this white dude
named Sandy is. The effect of these songs is rather jarring since they don't
sound remotely like anything I ever heard in a Tarzan movie (and I think that's
where most of us get our knowledge of 1930s Africa from). Shoot, even Paul's
co-star Nina Mae Mckinney who reportedly brought the Apollo down whenever she
played there gets in on the action and sings some song about sleeping to her
kid. With all this singing going on, I picked up the video box, furrowed my
brow and squinted at the credits to see if Judy Garland or Mickey Rooney were
scheduled to appear (probably to put on some type of talent show to save the
village), but was disappointed to note that the evil chief Mofolaba was played
by a guy named Tony Wane (didn't he do a nickel down at Stateville in the
eighties?). So combining the fact that you have some out of place singing and
a pro-imperialist viewpoint, along with questionable use of stock footage,
you're probably starting to get concerned that maybe this isn't exactly the
"milestone in the history of British cinema" as Variety is quoted as saying this one is.  Hey, if this movie was any good, you would have heard of, right? There's a
reason a movie from 1935 languishes in obscurity even though it's got Paul
Robeson running around in a loin cloth most of the time. But how exactly do
Sandy and
Bosambo become the most mismatched movie partners since Tango and Cash? Well,
Lord Sandy is the dude in charge of a little slice of heaven called Nigeria and
Bosambo is the con man from Liberia who tricks his way into becoming the chief
of the Ochuri tribe. Since Lord Sandy is one of those cunning white guys, he
immediately sees Bosambo as the fraud he is and immediately pulls out the file
he has on him (I'll bet it was about an inch thick!) and we see that Bosambo is
a pretender to the throne. Instead of putting this loser in leg irons, Sandy
sees that he's got someone that will collaborate with his British rule, I mean
be a good leader to his people, and he lets Bosambo become the leader of the
tribe for real. Besides, part of running things in that part of the world is
co-opting some of the locals so they'll do the grunt work and keep the locals
that don't see the benefit of having British culture foisted on them in line.
Specifically, the evil king Mofolaba whose tribe is one of those criminal
enterprises that raids other villagers and steals women for slave purposes.
Sandy immediately has Bosambo stop Mofolaba's efforts and lest you think that
Bosambo is getting nothing from this work, I only need to point out that the
ten women he saved each spent a night in his tent. As Bosambo is confronted
with this, Robeson engages in this fairly offensive acting style where he leers
at the women and then looks at Sandy like nothing is going on. I'm assuming
that this is perpetuating some type of stereotype, but not being a prejudiced
person, I have no idea what it is. Sandy realizes that Bosambo wouldn't be
able to survive more than a few months if he was having to rotate ten women
every
night in his tent, so he tells these hussies that they are going home. One says
that she is staying and marrying Bosambo. She is Lilongo (McKinney) and Sandy
takes a "suit yourself" attitude and they get married. This leads to five
years of prosperity and peace for the region (as well as for two children for
Bosambo and Lilongo), so you know that trouble is going to be brewing like my
innards were after lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in Niagra Falls, Ontario. 
Eventually Sandy has to leave his position as overseer, I mean, governor.
Why, oh why is Sandy leaving his "children" (ugh)? Some little tramp that we
never do see has stolen his heart (How does he have time, what with all the
orders he's barking out and all the messages he gets and receives from
pigeons?) and for some reason this requires Sandy to take a one year leave of
absence. None of you should fret however, because in his stead will be the
next best thing to Sandy himself - Ferguson! Fergie (no one called him that,
but that was probably because he got speared too fast) is obviously not long
for this world when Sandy tries to give him advice and he promptly ignores it.
No sooner does Sandy take off for the coast to get married, then do a couple of
bootlegging, gunrunning swine roll into the area to sell gin and rifles to the
natives. They also start the rumor that Sandy has died. The word quickly goes
out all along the area war drums (complete with subtitles) that Sandy is dead
and there is no law on the river anymore. Mofolaba sees this as an opportunity
to get back at the British and Bosambo who wrecked his human slaving operation
so when Fergie stupidly shows up at Mofolaba's camp for reasons that remain as
obtuse as Fergie himself, he gets all tied up and Mofolaba spears him. Mofo
(hahaha) is a little tense because before he got stabbed, Fergie broke off on
him
that Sandy would come back and then boy would he be sorry. He questions the
bootleggers again about Sandy and they reassure him that he really is dead.
The next thing I know, Sandy gets the news that Fergie has a long way to go to
fill his pith helmet and we are treated to a rather extended scene of him
flying back to Nigeria. Mofo's schemes are only beginning though, because he
still wants a little revenge on Bosambo. He has his wife kidnapped while
Bosambo is out welcoming back his good buddy Sandy. Bosambo goes back home
only to discover that the old lady has gone and got herself all captured and
stuff so it's time to pull the old "one man suicide mission to the evil king's
village" gimmick. He packs his kids and a note off to Sandy who is riding
around on his paddle steamer for some reason. Sandy's three hour tour has gone straight into the crapper because he just
caught himself a case of malaria. He lays around in his bed moaning and
drinking a lot of fluids, generally acting as if his about to be called home to
the pearly gates at any moment, until he gets the note that Bosambo has gone
after Mofo. Just like another great hero, Michael Jordan, Sandy leaps out of
sick bed, but unlike Mike, instead of dropping fifty on the Pacers, he brings
the machine gun on his paddle steamer up to Mofo's village and starts blasting
some sense into Mofo's tribe. Mofo tries to say it was the bootleggers that
killed Fergie, but Sandy isn't buying it and when Mofo tries to take Sandy out,
Bosambo gives him a little something something in the gut for his trouble.
Bosambo is then named king of
the world or something and everyone is happy again. This is obviously a
schoolboy's version of colonial Africa and a slow schoolboy at that. There's
not any depth to anything that is transpiring here and what does transpire
isn't really engaging in any kind of "action-adventure" aspect. If my history
is going to be simplistic pap, it needs to be exciting, like Braveheart or something. Robeson may have been an important figure with his singing,
acting and activism, but he's fairly embarrassing here, making modern audiences
uncomfortable with his facial expressions, the way he delivers his dialogue and
the subservient goody-goody-whitey-knows-best role that he surely loathed
doing. Leslie Banks leaves absolutely no impact on the audience with his bland
portrayal of Sandy. He stands around saying stuff that sounds like he's in
charge, but isn't involved in anything real interesting until the very end when
he saves Bosambo. Aside from the boring plot (enough with the stock footage of
animals, natives dancing, and canoeing), the real problem with this movie is the
completely pro-imperialist vision this movie tries to put across. It's like
one of those videos the tourism boards of some places put out trying to trick
you into going to West Virginia. Here, the Empire is trying to hoodwink its
subjects (in Britain they have subjects, it America we have citizens) into
believing that their country is some great father figure to all these "savages"
and that their exploitation of these people is really beneficial and without
the British there to correct them like schoolkids, they couldn't make it on
their own. A quietly offensive movie that does little more than make the
viewer drowsy, except for the shots of the topless natives dancing. I can't
believe the home office didn't order them to wear pasties or something!
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
|
|
