Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) Korda’s Surprising Anti-Apartheid Movie (Review)

The imperialist plot had been placed in the plot during the last days five days of shooting … I was roped into the picture because I wanted to portray the culture of the African people and I committed a faux pas which convinced me that I had failed to weigh the problems of 150,000,000 native Africans…I hate the picture

It is the only film of mine that can be shown in Italy or Germany, for it shows the negro as Fascist states desire him – savage and childish.

The above quotes are from Paul Robeson in relation to a 1935 picture he made for the filmmaker Zoltan Korda titled Sanders of the River. Based on the stories of Edgar Wallace, the film was set in Colonial Nigeria and the Hungarian-born Korda (brother of director, producer and writer Alexander Korda) took the unprecedented step of undertaking a four month voyage into Africa, recording traditional dances and ceremonies amongst the people there to subsequently integrate into the film’s narrative. Robeson, who was living in London at the time, was happy to accept the role of tribal chief Bosambo, because he believed that Korda had the intention of depicting Africans positively. It was only during some retakes after principal filming had concluded that Robeson realised the film’s message was being radically changed to support the continuation of colonial rule in Africa in the edit and, with colonial administrator Sir Bernard Henry Bourdillon serving as an advisor on the production along with the film’s ultimate dedication to “the handful of white men whose everyday work is an unsung saga of courage and efficiency”, it’s easy to see why Robeson felt hurt, betrayed and embarrassed enough to attempt to buy up all the prints of the film to prevent it from being shown.

I mention this because it says two things about Zoltan Korda. The first is that he was a director committed to authenticity, shooting his movies in the very locations – colonial Africa and India – that the stories were set, irrespective of the remoteness of these regions or the difficulties his film crew may face. The second is that, thanks to films like Sanders of the River, Elephant Boy (1937), The Drum (1938), The Four Feathers (1939) and Jungle Book (1942), Korda was a filmmaker who became known for productions that are, put frankly, colonialist propaganda that make for dated and uncomfortable viewing today. Whilst the former is incredibly apparent in his 1951 movie, Cry, the Beloved Country, the latter is mercifully unapparant and I find it a fascinating about-face.

Released to Blu-ray and DVD today by Studio Canal’s Vintage Classics label, Cry, the Beloved Country is an adaptation by Alan Paton (alongside blacklisted and uncredited screenwriter John Howard Lawson) of his own novel, still one of the best known works of South African literature and released just three years before the movie. Set in apartheid South Africa, it tells the story of Kumalo, a Zulu village priest who must head to Johannesburg to help his ailing sister and look for his estranged son. Seeing the wonders of the modern world for the first time, Kumalo also finds great corruption, abject poverty and racial inequality and witnesses its poisonous effects upon his kin. His sister has fallen into prostitution and beer brewing, whilst his son has impregnated a young girl and murdered a white man and advocate for racial equality in a botched home burglary. As the wheels of justice begin to turn, Kumalo comes face to face with Jarvis, the dead man’s father, a racist white farmer from Kumalo’s own village. Together, both men navigate the hurt inflicted upon them by the loss of their sons and ultimately find tolerance and a common ground. Acclaimed by the American Booksellers Association as one of only three books worth reading in 1948, a screen adaptation was inevitable. What perhaps was less inevitable was the fact that this film, with its scathing judgement upon the system of apartheid, was helmed by Zolton Korda.

As befits Korda’s commitment to authenticity, much of the film was shot on location in apartheid South Africa, whilst interior scenes were shot back home at Shepperton Studios. Given the authoritarian system of racial segregation, Korda had to play clever with South Africa’s immigration authorities regarding his stars, the former boxer and blacklisted civil rights activist Canada Lee, who was cast in the lead role of Kumalo, and in the significant supporting role of Johannesburg minister, Reverend Msimangu, a young Bahamian actor making only his second feature film, Sidney Poitier. To navigate their intolerance, Korda informed the authorities that Lee and Poitier were his indentured servants rather than his film’s stars. The decision to take the role of Kumalo was a personal and important one for Canada Lee who was unable to find work in his native US because of the HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities) – he had already refused to denounce his friend, the aforementioned Paul Robeson, as a communist, arguing “All you’re trying to do is split my race” – as he intended to compile a first-hand eyewitness report on the apartheid system for the West. Sadly, Lee suffered his first heart attack during the filming and never fully recovered. He died of a second attack just a year later at the age of 45. Cry, the Beloved Country message of universal brotherhood being the apt, final word on his life’s mission to achieve this ideal. For Poitier, the film was just the start of an incredible career, and he already looks like a star in waiting here. It’s may be a little sentimental and simplistic, but nonetheless wholly fitting to see his own work in the civil rights movement being his picking up of the torch left by his co-star Lee.

Korda directs a remarkable and sophisticated adaptation, finding his focus in the two fathers, Lee’s humble and dignified Kumalo, respected as wise in the village but reduced to an innocent abroad in the big divided city, and Jarvis portayed by Charles Carson, a man whose bigotry derives exclusively from his privilege and belief that ‘white is right’. A man who was at such a loss as to understanding his son’s campaigns when the son was alive, that he worried his photo of him shaking hands with a Black man in the newspaper may reflect badly upon his own social standing. It would be easy to pitch Jarvis as an antagonist, but the film has such an innate humanity that it knows to do so would be incorrect and cheap. Instead, the true antagonist of Cry, the Beloved Country is the system of apartheid itself. A system that forces one group of people into poverty and servitude simply because of the colour of their skin. The heart of the story is told through the journey of both fathers to an understanding of the country they reside in through the lives (and deaths) of their sons. It’s a sound mechanism in which to explore an abhorrent system that existed in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It’s just a shame that it took the nation forty or so years to realise what this film had to say.

But it’s the fact that Korda understood what the story had to say and was determined to get its message across in his film that I find so fascinating. I’d love to be able to say that Cry, the Beloved Country brought about a sea change in Korda’s work, but the truth is this proved to be his penultimate movie before his death in 1961 at the age of 66. Mystifyingly, his final project was to co-direct with future Dr No director Terence Young the 1955 movie Storm Over the Nile, a shot-for-shot, line-for-line retread of Korda’s much acclaimed adaptation of A.E.W Mason’s novel The Four Feathers in 1939. And retread is the word. After the progressive stance of Cry, the Beloved Country, Korda was back to extolling the virtues of the colonial rule of the British Empire. Despite filming on location in Sudan, naturally, the film is racially insensitive enough to cast white actors such as Christopher Lee in the role of Sudanese natives. It’s the kind of movie in which you imagine most of the budget went on the application of ‘brown-face’ make-up, an embarrasing misstep and return to past ‘glories’ after the good work made here.

Vintage Classics release boasts a series of fine extras including a 1990 interview with actor Lionel Ngakane who portayed the unfortunate son here, and an appreciation of Canada Lee’s life and career from Mona Z Smith, author of Lee’s biography Becoming Something. There’s also a documentary on the movie industry’s depiction of race and Africa, In Darkest Hollywood, the 1962 film Africa: Alan Paton and footage from the premiere of Cry, the Beloved Country, along with a stills gallery.

Mark’s Archive – Cry, the Beloved Country