King Solomon's Mines
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Movie Reviews of King Solomon's Mines
Movie Review: DVD King Solomon's Mines
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent quality. Enjoyed this oldie very much. Prompt delivery. No problems what so ever.Movie Review: king solomons kmines
Summary: 5 Stars
An excellant film for action and adventure. I will never get tired of watching it.Movie Review: King Solomon's Mines - Debt & Freedom
Summary: 4 Stars
I've never seen The African Queen but now I know who this Alan Quartermain dude is supposed to be, and I can see how much better we had it with Indiana Jones. But this review is about a black thing. A small one, though.
It happened Sunday on Continental 665 with the crew from Houston. I swiped my one remaining card with credit and got the little 7 inch screen (smaller than an iPad, larger than an iPhone) to connect with Dish Network. It actually turned out to be a pretty good deal for 6 bucks. And so the film of the day was on Turner, King Solomon's Mines.
I once wrote that the true test of one's own liberation from the mental shackles of black American peasantry could be found in the ability to eat watermelon and fried chicken without shame. I don't know how long, if ever, that benchmark will make any sense, but I'm sure it did to me at some distant point. I thought about that matter of liberation while watching a film I can imagine undergraduates at Brown squealing at in disgust on three levels of deconstruction. But it only took a little bit of doing, or so it seemed to me. I happen to be in the throes of my addiction to the portrait of Victorian England, step one Sherlock Holmes. As such, I am de-presentizing myself and coming to grips with history - devaluing those trinkets we are so easily seduced by and trying to determine what it is a truly free man does on a day to day basis. And so let me take that tangent for a moment.
It occurs to me in a trifling way from KSM (Not the terrorist, the film) but in a grander way from The Man Who Would Be King (although I didn't watch the film to its conclusion - I did read the entire book) how it is that men become leaders of men. They pay them for honorable work. This is so very fundamental that I am astonished we don't all know it better. It speaks volumes about our decrepit public values that such things must be learned from study. Now one only need look to Haiti to find in our public consciousness something other than the ennobling matter of contract employment; it is the pursuit of charity over that of honorable work. It is done in the exorbitant self-righteousness of those dedicating themselves to such a cause, viz Katrina. Charity is the chance for the peasant to drop a superior dime, and the politics of such matters lure the whole peasant world towards the swamp of socialism. Why? Because when it is considered morally superior to rescue a man than to employ a man, we grow a nation of slavers. Yes I said it.
Let us recall Toni Morrison's insight on Robinson Crusoe.
'At last he lays his head flat on the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this, made all the signs to me of subjugation, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me as long as he lived.' -- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
'The problem of internalizing the master's tongue is the problem of the rescued. Unlike the problems of survivors who may be lucky, fated, etc. the rescued have the problem of debt. If the rescuer gives you back your life, he shares in that life. But if as in Friday's case, if the rescuer saves your life by taking you away from the dangers, the complications, the confusion of home, he may very well expect the debt to be paid in full.' -- Toni Morrison, 1992
Now I read that "master's tongue" stuff as just antipathy to modern life in a Republic, as if raffia ennobles. There's a crowd Toni plays to that doesn't get out much. They like to think that English itself is a prison. They may be onto something, but I doubt it. Nevertheless, the question of debt is not a trifle. When you save a man's life - the sort of distended belly, flies on the face, life we here is Sally Struthersville get all moony about - then you have a rather hefty debt in your annoying condescending favor. This is the same sort of debt that makes liberal jaws drop when they encounter Mexican American Republicans and Africans who say no to aid. The other side of that same coin gives debt forgiveness to college students who join whatever Obama is calling the Peace Corps these days - you know the sort who minister to Mexican American migrant farmworkers and starving Africans of all sorts. Quid pro quo in the socialist circle of life, all centrally managed and planned from a singular set of humanist values to the best of our scientific ability. Just don't step outside the line, comrade.
Why? Because we made you.
That is the difference between charity and employment. The donor expects respect forever. The employer doesn't call you when the contract is over. The man with honorable work, makes his deal, does his share, and moves on. The rescued slave must sing the praises of his liberator for generations. It's a problem we have here in America. "Legacy of slavery" is a familiar phrase. If people could have just gotten paid, we'd be over all this.
Which brings me back to Alan Quartermain and his train of native porters, spear handlers, cooks and bottlewashers. Or PDiddy and his entourage of press flacks, personal shoppers and weed carriers for that matter. It's not exploitation. It's work.
In the genre of "wow check out these weird African animals and tribes" flicks, I'm not very savvy. And for the sake of stating the obvious, you can clearly see why the African nations involved did their best to get whole villages decked out and put all in frame for the sake of the whiteys on and off camera and in posterity. Pictures of elephant are a dime a dozen, but native dance on that scale just doesn't play very often here in the States. I was flat mesmerized, especially for the final shindig. I actually got into that sentimental zone where I'm thinking - maybe we've lost something extraordinary here. I don't know. Have we? It does get back to the question of what a free man does on the daily. After all, it's the Left who wants everyone to have a state guaranteed minimum wage, affordable housing and a small, fuel efficient car with airbags. The Watusi don't want that, do they? So who is going about destroying indigenous culture? It's the socialist, because he can't leave anybody alone. Not in Darfur, not in Somalia, not in Haiti. Everyone must be rescued. Everyone must have health care. Everyone must have instant citizenship in the comfiest nation on Earth. You know, before it warms over.
In my newest favorite podcast, Philosophy Bites, our hosts entertained a guest who talked about cannibalism. We have lost the cannibal. But the cannibal, and the very idea of the cannibal, elevated our thinking about the true natural nature of man. What would we be without civilization? What is it about civilization that helps? What hinders? And similarly in this global economy I ask about the very idea of the peasant, the urban peasant I know very well. Does he work and having done his work can he be left alone or is he rescued and indentured to that act of charity?
Watching King Solomon's Mines says a lot about what 5,000 Pounds Sterling might do and how negotiation over the value of work goes directly to our souls and what may or may not be troubling them. Watch the first encounter with Mrs Curtis and Alan Quartermain closely - everything else, aside from the separate and distinct journey of the Watusi, circles around that exchange. It is in the end, the fate of the Watusi that seals the fate of the questing whites. They are rescued. Then again, homegirl had the Dosh from square one.
I could observe the native Africans from my psychological and temporal distance neatly contextualized in that dated bit of filmmaking. I could see the strengths and weaknesses of the film qua film, and imagine what the directors had in mind. I like the idea that once there was a thing called 5000 pounds and for this one might be set for life, instead of the fact that we are three weeks from starvation if the power goes out in our half million dollar suburban raffia. I look at that Africa and that England and I see that they were once full of free men, and so I am sentimental.
Movie Review: "A woman? A woman on safari?! No thank you!!" Allan Quatermain is about to learn a thing or two
Summary: 4 Stars
Henry Curtis, an Englishman who arrived in Africa to search for the legendary King Solomon's mines, has not been heard from in two years. Now, in 1897, his wife, Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr), has arrived with her brother, John Goode (Richard Carlson), to find him. She will spare no expense, undertake any danger, to rescue her husband. Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger), rugged, resourceful, decent and experienced, is just the big game hunter and old Africa hand she needs. It will take money, deposited up front, to overcome this widower's reluctance (he has a young son in England to provide for) to go on a dangerous wild goose chase. If her husband hasn't been heard of in two years, Quatermain tells Mrs. Curtis, he is undoubtedly dead. He also has doubts about her motives. They dislike each other on sight...but off into darkest Africa they go in one of Hollywood's grand adventure romances.
The adventure part, for modern audiences, may seem a bit old fashioned. The trio encounter stampeding zebras, strange tribes, spiders the size of saucers, slimy centipedes, army ants, lions, crocodiles...and, as Quatermain points out to Elizabeth Curtis and her brother, in Africa human beings are just meat like every other animal. Still, the on-location color photography is nicely done. It might have been unusual in 1950 but it still holds up well nearly sixty years later. The whole concept of Africa at the turn of the century as a place of Victorian imagination and danger is hard not to enjoy. Africa was a place of lost cities, lost Roman legions, lost fabulous treasures, and even an ancient, forever-young queen who ruled without mercy -- a kind of `she-who-must-really-be-obeyed' She, as Horace Rumpole might say.
The romance part is handled with a great deal of charm. Elizabeth Curtis and Allan Quatermain find a good deal to bicker over, and bicker they do. Granger handles the he-man stuff with aplomb, and just as easily handles the back-and-forth with Kerr. It is Kerr, however, who brings delight to the movie. She's stuck with the requisite fainting and the turning away from death, but Kerr makes Elizabeth Curtis a woman with spine and character. Kerr shows us with subtlety how Curtis is beginning to learn from and enjoy her adventures, as frightening as they might seem at times. Her gradual appreciation of Quatermain is low key and endearing. Soon after King Solomon's Mines, MGM turned Deborah Kerr into a classic MGM-style lady. What a loss, although her skill and talent as an actress still shown through. For me, I'll remember Deborah Kerr best as Bridie Quilty in I See a Dark Stranger, Sister Clodagh in Black Narcissus and, much later, as Miss Giddens in The Innocents.
For poignancy, see if you can spot Hugo Haas. He plays a seedy, dirty renegade in an isolated African village. It's not much of a part but he handles it well. Haas in the Thirties was a popular and celebrated star in Czechoslovakia. He acted, wrote, directed and produced. He was his own man. When the Nazis took over he had to flee and went to America. There, he was an unknown with no celebrity. He had to start over, not an auspicious thing for a portly, round-faced actor with a sharp nose. His name meant nothing. He made something of a reputation as a character actor in usually not-so-good movies. Haas used his money in the Fifties to start making his own movies, starring, writing and directing, just like the creative force he had been in Czechoslovakia. The movies, however, were just cheap quickies, reeking of lurid storylines. He died in 1968, his reputation in tatters, homesick and depressed. Just for nostalgia, go to Youtube and type in Hugo Haas and look for the clips from his 1935 movie At Zije Neboztik. You'll find one with Haas in evening dress at the bar of a posh club. He sings/acts that great song "Me To Tady Nebavi." (No, I don't know what it means.) Hugo Haas could be very good.
Movie Review: Hold still whilst I slap your Victorian bottom!
Summary: 4 Stars
KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1950) was considered to be one hell of a flick when I was young. It was RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and JURASSIC PARK all rolled into one. Forget the Richard Chamberlain remake of the mid-1980s, which in any case was meant as a spoof of RAIDERS.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard created big game hunter Allan Quatermain in 1885, and many adventures were enjoyed by English readers; MINES was only the fist. Sir Henry conceived of Quatermain as somewhat like himself, an ugly, old bearded man, a wiry, hypervigilant insomniac.
This film naturally looks weak by today's standards, yet look at it again: a massive zebra stampede which the performers (or their stunt doubles) had to endure; breathtaking African scenery; genuine African natives looking like they want to eat everyone in sight.
And Stewart Granger! Well, he was not bearded as Quatermain originally was, but he certainly did the job. It's tough to think of another Englishman of the era who could have done it. He even made Deborah Kerr look good - no mean feat!
It is a curious thing that John Wayne - after having made a terrific splash in THE SEARCHERS - should get himself mixed up in a silly Quatermain rip-off (as Joe January in the 1957 loser LEGEND OF THE LOST, vid. my review and see if you can help laughing a bit). I suspect that Wayne was riding Granger's wake. Funny how movie star legends are made.
This film got an 'honorable mention' when it cropped up in the Tracy-Hepburn comedy DESK SET: a query about the seven-foot-tall native was asked. Then the "New York Times" review of the film was read aloud. That does not happen during this era ... ever. It rarely happens today. (The reference made in DESK SET was to Umbopa, king of the Watusis in exile, played by the gorgeous African actor "Siriaque".)
The mines are naturally something of a joke, and so are the goofs galore. The biggest goof as far as I am concerned is that the adventurers easily escape the "mine" (more of a Neanderthal's toilet, really) - and they leave behind what looks like a billion dollars in rough gems. They do not even glance backward at all that treasure. Even as a small child I picked up on that silly gaffe.
The acting as is as good as it could get outside a tense Hitchcock film. While Kerr is annoying as hell, I suppose it was her job. The silly, homosexual character of John Goode (Richard Carlson) was also fairly badly acted. When he wasn't ogling Quatermain, he was flat-lining his speaking parts. The Africans acted much more professionally than he.
This is a film that can't be missing from anyone's collection. While it may be terribly dated, in other ways it more than makes up for all that. Granger is still tan and strong; the look at the "Watusi" tribe alone is worth it. An all-time classic! - even if the 'real' Solomon's mines we found not long ago are really just test shafts for copper.
If you get this, or have already seen it, check out Granger's safari hat. Do you really think Indiana Jones' fedora started all this adventurer-explorer-in-a-hat routine?!