CinemaScope adventure melodrama from 20th Century Fox and director Henry King is set In the mid-19th century, where feisty Irish farmer's daughter Katie O'Neill (Susan Hayward) moves with her family to South Africa to escape the Potato Famine. They join up with a large wagon train of settlers trying to establish a Free Dutch State in the African veldt. The settlers are led by the visionary Paul Van Riebeck (Tyrone Power) and the hot-tempered Kurt Hout (Richard Egan), and soon Katie is in a love triangle between them as they fight off hostile natives and political differences to make a new home for everyone. Also featuring Agnes Moorehead, Rita Moreno, Hope Emerson, Henry O'Neill, Brad Dexter, Kevin Corcoran, and Paul Thompson.
Shot on location in the South African wild, the scenery is beautiful and director King fills the screen with lots of activity. Power gets to give several speeches about "making the land free for all" which seems to translate into "we settlers should be able to live wherever we want and the natives just need to live with it." That kind of colonialism can get grating after a while, despite my efforts to separate the era of both the story and the movie itself. Hayward gets to do her patented strong survivor shtick, while Power looks bored and Egan seems intent on chewing up everything not tied down. The movie strives for epic grandeur but ends up just a forgettable time-waster.
Shot on location in the South African wild, the scenery is beautiful and director King fills the screen with lots of activity. Power gets to give several speeches about "making the land free for all" which seems to translate into "we settlers should be able to live wherever we want and the natives just need to live with it." That kind of colonialism can get grating after a while, despite my efforts to separate the era of both the story and the movie itself. Hayward gets to do her patented strong survivor shtick, while Power looks bored and Egan seems intent on chewing up everything not tied down. The movie strives for epic grandeur but ends up just a forgettable time-waster.