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.
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.