User Reviews

This is a sobering and disquieting saga translated from the pen of Alan Paton to the big screen. It does not blink in taking a good hard look at the price South African citizens are forced to pay in misery due to the institution of Apartheid being held in force in their country. There is a documentary feel to this story as it is told straight forward without any flashy effects and builds slowly to its tragic conclusion. I felt more like I was looking at real people grappling with having their best efforts to improve their community thwarted by a time honored system of racism whose corrupting influence was not above destroying in spirit, mind and soul the future of its country. This film suggests that human social progress, unlike technological revolutions, advances more often by small steps in fits and starts, rather than in the quantum leaps of innovators and inventors.

The history of this production reveals that this was a dangerous and difficult film to make. I have read that the director Zoltan Korda along with Sidney Poitier and Canada Lee, could have been arrested and jailed without a trial, but for cooking up the scheme whereby they told South African immigration authorities that Poitier and Lee were not actors, but actually Korda's indentured servants. This was the first time a major film was shot in the racially divided country of South Africa. Canada Lee planned to make a full report about life in South Africa after this. He was even called before the House Un-American Actvities Committee to explain his actions, but before he could testify died of heart failure. So beyond being a statement advocating for social justice put before the conscience of the world, this film required real acts of courage that put even its participants in some personal risk.

The great Canada Lee, inspired and influenced by the liberal revolutionary Orson Welles, gives his last unforgettable performance here as Reverend Stephen Kumalo. Sidney Poitier hits the streets with him as Reverend Msimangu and we begin to see flashes of that surly brilliance that would be his hallmark in films like MARK OF THE HAWK (1957), and IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967). Coming from the back country of South Africa, Reverend Kumalo journeys to Johannesberg to experience and witness first hand how the squalid conditions of Big City life breed crime and prostitution that refuse to spare even members of his own family. He has little inkling of the personal tragedy that awaits him, but a grim foreboding begins to hover like a growing spectral cloud over his quest to find first his missing sister and finally his missing son. The fated reunion reveals these family members wallowing in the moral depths of a system where the poverty of their urban community offers them no honorable or dignified way out.

The irony and paradox of this drama seems to suggest that apartheid has a godlike presence in the lives of its citizens, preying impartially on black and white alike, neither the self seeking or the well-meaning community minded are spared from its grim edicts. The system appears to be all, and its seems to render the efforts of James Jarvis as played by Charles Carson, and particularly his son, as well as Reverends Kumalo and Msimangu, pathetic and futile. But the fathers Kumalo and Carson reach through their pain and anguish to keep pecking and chipping away to sculpt a better South Africa in their wake. Their quiet resolve to work together to do this, is humbly heroic. But finally, Stephen Kumalo is left alone to climb a mountain into the sunlight to face the tolling bells in unspeakable grief...

This film was remarkable for its time; having the main characters be black, while the supporting characters are white. The reverse is true for the movie posters that promote the movie. But it is enough that Canada Lee continues the tradition of the great Ira Aldridge in agitating for new understandings of the freedoms possible in human relationships and in the world. Both gentlemen, along with Sidney Poitier, deserve a serious examination of their adventuresome and colorful lives by future filmmakers. However, the struggle it took to make this work of Alan Paton a valid social statement that a popular audience could embrace, will always be a milestone that stands and shines brightly on its own.

I have not seen the remake and have no interest in seeing it, as I was very happy with this film and can't think WHY you'd want to mess with such a fine film (of course, when has this stopped Hollywood in the past?). I think part of the reason I loved the film is that it was NOT a simple anti-Apartheid film. While Apartheid is dealt with, I loved and respected how the evil that the film centers upon was a black man senselessly killing an innocent white person. It really took guts to attack this evil institution AND yet admit the senselessness of this murder.

However, the movie does not dwell on this murderer but on his very decent father, the reverend. You can really tell that the old man is completely torn and racked with pain over his son's deeds. And, no matter what he says or does to the victim's decent father (a man who himself is against Apartheid), he can't undo the act. Amazingly, the victim's father understands and appreciates this. So in the end, you are left with two fundamentally decent men who are struggling to come to terms with senseless violence but maintain their humanity and dignity. A brilliant film that is about people and society.

I only watched this film because Sidney Poitier is in it. I've seen most of his films and he is (or was since he hasn't really acted in anything since 2001, 1997 in film) an exceptional actor. Most of his films were quite good, some others...not so much. Sadly, this is one of the lesser films. The title is a powerful title for a film; and I am sure the novel it was based on was powerful itself. The subject matter of apartheid is a powerful subject and for 1951, I'm sure this film wasn't easy to make especially since it was a new application in South Africa, which started in 1948 and didn't end until 1991 (I was 14 years old in 1991).

An old man named Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) travels to Johannesburg looking for some of his family members: sister, brother, son, etc., with the help of Reverend Msimangu (Sidney Poitier). He finds his sister who's a prostitute, his brother basically a braggart, the poorer version of one. Johannesburg, in the view of Kumalo, seems to be equivalent to Sodom: a den of constant sin; basically hell. The novel, as I have read, incorporates much of the Bible into it; using characters from it as characters in the novel. Also, tries to paint a neutral view of the struggles of not only white people in South Africa but also of black people in South Africa. This film leans more one way than the other, there's really no semblance of neutrality here, for better or worse. And that's fine, I guess.

The acting is below average to average by all, including Sidney Poitier but I feel it rests more on the script and direction rather than their inability to act well. Even with the obvious non-actors throughout. The composition is sparse and in being so moves the film at a snail's pace. That's what I always found composition to be used for, mainly: as a way to move quieter perhaps more dramatic scenes along. Here, there's rarely any of it throughout the film; especially in the dramatic scenes such as when a father hears about the death of his son, then his wife finds out, and it's talked about by many others afterward: absolutely no composition to help move the scenes along or give context to the emotional impact it is supposed to have. Now, I know silence can be deafening but it doesn't really work in this film, in my opinion. If it had a stronger script, maybe...and where there is composition it just didn't work for me. Like when the mother and father lost their son and the wife is reading something and there's composition, and you can barely hear her speaking. Not a good place for composition, in my opinion. Then after that scene they have vibrant and loud composition with the police trying to find the culprits and I felt it didn't work there either because the totality of the film (up to that point) is actually pretty solemn and then they throw this unexpected excitement. It felt like the element of the story was being changed. And it was but changed back to being solemn and the composition is gone. When Kumalo finds out his son, the one he's been looking for, is the one who killed the son of the white couple in a supposed robbery gone bad he's excited (in an agitated way) but there's no emotion to be felt because, in my opinion, it's too solemn. If that makes sense to anyone other than myself.

The 1995 version with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris I felt is better than this film but the contrast of this one being filmed during apartheid and that one after it, is not lost on me. Both films have powerful statements about an unjust happenstance to a people undeserving of such cruelty by an invader who sees them less based on the color of their skin. That perception isn't lost on me but doesn't make the film any better.

-Nam