CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 727, 19 June 1953, Page 18

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY

(London Films) There is a lovely road that runs from Ixope into the hills. These hills are grasscovered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it... HESE are the words with which Alan Paton began his novel Cry, The Beloved Country, and they serve also to introduce the film-as honest a translation of a fine story as you could expect within the limits of the screen; as steady and unflinching a look at one of the great perplexities of our time as the cinema has yet allowed itself. To apportion fairly the credit for this moving picture — and in places it is moving beyond’ my power to describe it — is not an easy assignment. Often enough one can say, here is a director’s picture, or this or that player carries the show; or it. may be the script or the photography that raises a production above the level of the average. But to do justice to those who made this film one must spread the honours more widely. A substantial share must belong to Zoltan Korda, the producer and director, who has handled his characters with understanding and sympathy and extracted the best. from his technical assistants. Paton, who adapted his own | novel for the screen, has I think improved the story by condensation. Cry, The Beloved Country, which is a story of white and black in Africa, differs from the usual American treatment of the same theme in that it deals in anguish rather than anger, in self-search-ing agonies rather than antagonisms, in that almost insoluble dilemma which Paton describes somewhere as "the fear of bondage and the bondage of. fear." But in emphasising the little awkward acts of goodwill that make life at least | eens for individuals of both races, | in seeking to tell a story of "comfort in | desolation," the book has many passages that could be called invitations to sentimentality. The film does not ignore this

authentic element in the situation, but it does keep it within bounds, and in doing so gains something in unity and force. The acting is splendid. Canada Lee, as the elderly Rev. Kumalo whose personal tragedy is the thread that binds the story together, has the most exacting role and handles it with restraint and dignity, but the player who forced himself most strongly on my ,attention was Sidney Poitier. To the part of Msimangu, the young Zulu priest of Johannesburg, he brings a fiery intensity that makes it memorable out of all proportion to its place in the story. But beyond producer-director, scriptwriter, and players, there is another credit to be given. Cry, The Beloved Country was photographed by Robert Krasker, who was responsible for the camera-work in Henry V, Brief Encounter, Odd Man Out and The Third Man. He has made this latest film literally a study in black and white-strong African sun, strong shadows. His pictures of Johannesburg’s shanty-town, of sterile slag-heaps and eroded countryside-and of the sweet-grassed uplands, too-are not quickly to be forgotten.