SUNDOWN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 157, 26 June 1942, Page 16

SUNDOWN

‘Wanger-United Artists)

UNDOWN is billed as The Adventure Picture That Has Everything, and I’m inclined to think it has, in fact, too much of everything. But if you like your

film fare strong and your local colour put on with a palette knife, you’ll probably enjoy Sundown. And isn’t it a suitable title for an Epic of the Empire on Which the Sun Seldom Sets? Actually it has to set sometimes, because quite a lot of action, including the dénouement, takes place at night. But to get back to what the film’s got. 1. A number of shots of herds of gnus ("no gnus is good gnus" as the natives quaintly put it, and "here is the gnus and this is Mumbo-Jumbo shooting it’), lions, giraffes, rhinoceri, etc. scampering over the plains of Nigeria much as they scampered over them in Sanders of the River, and we suspect they’re the same rhinoceri, giraffes, etc., and the same plains. 2. Little Miss Zia ("Too alluring to be Trusted, Too Dangerous to Love"), in other words Gene Tierney, who trips round the desert in the vicinity of the Outpost of Empire, faintly Arabesque in flowing lengths of obviously unrationed material. This may be due to the fact that she runs her own chain of stores from Cairo to Zanzibar. She’s extremely beautiful, too beautiful not to be a beautiful spy, and reputedly halfcaste (and less than quarter-chaste). However she turns out later to be 100% Pure White and half the romantic complications are thereby removed. -3. The White Man’s Burden, ably borne by native tomtoms (there’s a lot of incidental and often accidental music) and by George Sanders (not "of the River"), Bruce Cabot, and two others, who are all definitely White Men, and addicted to standing bare-headed and bare-kneed at Sundown on the veranda of their Empire-Outpost bungalow and looking calmly and courageously into the future. After Sundown they relax somewhat and even give little supper parties, or have fun dressing up as camel drivers and setting fire to things. 4. A Daring Plot to smuggle arms to the Shenzi, fostered by a Fifth Columnist of the lowest calibre. Actually it’s rather difficult~- at first to decide which is the Fifth Columnist, but fairly soon you recognise the White Men because of their habit of standing on the veranda at Sundown, etc., and then you just count up, and you get the Fifth. 5. A Message. 6 A completely superfluous final scene in the ruins of St. Giles, in Lons don, with Sir Cedric Hardwicke preaching an impressive sermon without the aid of native tomtoms, etc. And in the second row from the front are EmpireBuilder Bruce Cabot, and the alluring Miss Zia, now Mrs. Bruce Cabot and attired in only four coupons’ worth of material in the shape of a snappy suit. But what are they doing there, I asked myself. By this time they should be at least half-way back to the Farthest Outpost, just in case any more Fifth Columnists have taken advantage of their absence to start unbuilding the Empire