MEN OF TWO WORLDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 416, 13 June 1947, Page 12

MEN OF TWO WORLDS

(Two Cities)

HIS is such a well intentioned movie, has so many good points, and is such a welcome change from both the Fitzpatrick Travelosue and

Trader Horn type of African film, that I am really sorry I cannot be more enthusiastic about it. The theme, though it has been used* before, is a dramatically promising one: it deals with the struggle of modern medicine against black magic which occurs in a native village when the authorities are trying to check an epidemic of sleeping sickness. Unfortunately the film itself seems to have been infected with a variety of the same complaint; for long periods it suffers from a deadly lethargy and listlessness, relieved ‘only spasmodically by brighter intervals during which one’s attention is engaged by the music of Arthur Bliss (based on African themes) and an audio-visual pattern of native drums against a background of leaping flames and dark forest. Men of Two Worlds, originally conceived as a short documentary, went sick in my opinion when the producers decided to expand the theme into a £600,000 British super-feature in technicolour. In the (finished product the dramatic impact of the story has been deadened by padding, and documentary realism has been smothered by conventional devices which might have come out of any old Hollywood pigeon-hole. Dramatically it was perfectly legitimate to make the hero a Negro composer returning to his tribe after many years in England, and this piece of invention also enables us to enjoy the music by Arthur Bliss; but it was a pity they could not have found a more convincing figure for the job than Robert Adams, who plays Kisenga. He is certainly much more convincing . than either Eric Portman, as the District Commissioner, or Phyllis Calvert, as the woman doctor, who just don’t belong in the picture at all; but he can’t hold a candle to Orlando Martins, who gives such a splendid performance as the cunning witch-doctor Magole. This is a fatal flaw in the: film, since the script requires Kisenga to challenge Magole to a test of medicine versus black magic (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) and to triumph eventually over the forces of darkness after nearly succumbing to his inbred superstition. This result, of course, is as it should be, but if Kisenga and Magole had been real personalities, I doubt very much if it would have worked out that way, The conveniently stage-managed climax isn’t the only thing in the picture which takes some swallowing-there’s also Miss Calvert and her pastel-shaded wardrobebut it is the part most likely to stick in your throat.