THE SEEKERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 781, 9 July 1954, Page 16

THE SEEKERS

(Rank-Fanfare) ST six years ago, when we were still reeling under the impact of Hollywood’s Green Dolphin Street, I consoled myself with the reflection that one of the minor compensations for being involved in‘a spectacular (but not fatal) accident was the simple pleasure of Teading about it in the newspapers and swapping experiences with others likewise involved. At that level, Miss Goudge’s epic (which presented Lana Turner as one of our pioneer settlers and the inventor of sheepfarming) was a howling success-for seeing ourselves as others see us is not invariably the chastening experience moralists would like to believe. The Seekers (which is also a tale of Olde New Zealand) will, I imagine, attract the New Zealand fiilmgoer for somewhat similar reasons-but I doubt if it will provide any of us with quite so much*inmocent fun. It is, in fact, neither good enough nor bad enough to make a -S8tfong.impression. It has its quota of* howlers, its inaccuracies and anachronisms, but (with the possible exception of Miss Laya Raki) they are neither so obtrusive nor so comically ludicrous as Hollywood's. There is, in

shert, no spectacular crash this time; only the sensation of a gradual letdown. And who let down whom? Ultimately, of course, the responsibility rests on the producer (George H. Brown). I should not have thought it impossible to produce a film good enough as historical drama to enjoy a succes d’estime, yet simple enough in its fictional terms to achieve a box-office success also-both here and elsewhere-but so far as these two objectives can be detected in The Seekers they appear to be mutually exclusive. _The director (Ken Annakin) seems to have fallen between the same two stools as the producer. His foregrounds are always just a little too full of local colour-geysers or boiling mud, Maori artifacts or tattooed faces; his backgrounds range from splendid natural panoramas to stiffly obvious studio sets. And in between foreground and background nothing profound or moving ever happens. For the story is a weak and thin affair, a half-hearted attempt to apply to the New Zealand of 1820

or thereabouts the hackneyed situations of the Hollywood frontier thriller-and even some of the dialogue: "New Zealand is a wide place; a man has room to breathe there,’ says Jack Hawkins, turning his back on the Old Country. Even the cast appeared to be ill at ease. Hawkins seemed thoroughly uncomfortable as an errant husband (that was intended, of course, but I’m sure his discomfort wasn’t all simulated), Glynis Johns was completely miscastit takes all kinds to make a new world, but anyone less like a pioneer’s wife would be hard to imagine; and Inia Te Wiata’s acting, even his movements, suggested grand opera more than anything else. The only member of the cast who seemed untroubled by inner misgivings was Laya Raki. This young woman is almost a stock situation in herself. With her glossy black hair and well-upholstered figure I can easily imagine her as an archetype of Primitive Woman-the Nubile Savage. She could be Ayesha, or Kapiolani, or Poca-hontas-and if Mr. de Mille gets her in his sights she probably will be.