Sundown

This is a pretty good adventure tale of WWII before the US got involved.Perhaps the most interesting character is Pallini, the humane, civilized Italian gentleman who is not sorry to be a prisoner of the British rather than fighting on the side of the Axis.Maybe the most striking scene is the one in which they find the rifles that are being smuggled in to arm the natives against the British, and acid is used to raise the markings that have been ground off.When the markings indicate the Skoda Works in Czeckoslovakia(which had been occupied by Hitler several years before, so it was not the Czecks who were smuggling the guns) Pallini says with a shudder. "Its THEM!Its always THEM!".Without ever mentioning Nazis.Supposedly this was because we weren't in the war yet, but in fact it is extremely effective,like a monster whose presence is sensed, but not seen.It is as though Pallini is referring to some evil that is so terrible that he can't even bring himself to mention its name,the horror that is even more horrible because it has no name.

Veteran Hollywood cameraman Charles B. Lang peaked early in the Oscar stakes by winning his only statuette for the 1932 version of 'A Farewell to Arms'.

Twenty years before his magnificent desert photography on 'One-Eyed Jacks' lost to 'West Side Story', Lang's incredible cloudscapes (when at least he was up against 'Citizen Kane'!) for 'Sundown' (set in Kenya when it was in British East Africa but shot in Arizona and New Mexico) lost out to 'How Green Was My Valley' (set in Wales but shot in California).

So much for the Academy Awards...

A surprisingly efficient and startling adventure feature from Africa by Henry Hathaway for being so young and early - this is already Hathaway completely fledged, and it's a very colourful drama although in black and white. Gene Tierney, also very young and fresh, provides the romanticism with glowing colours, and George Sanders for once plays a very unusually honest and heroic role. It's a great adventure, and the cave scenes are gorgeously suggestive in both drama, invention and cinematography. The photo is stupendous, and although rather thin, brief and superficial, it must be deemed as a great film - on a small scale, but nevertheless.

Sundown is a wartime morale boosting film that has not worn well over the years. The only thing eternal about it is Gene Tierney whose beauty is ageless.

Gene's an exotic Arab woman who comes into an outpost now run by the British in what is now Somalia. The British have recently taken it over from the Italians in Africa and Bruce Cabot is running the civil administration. Coming to handle the military end is Major George Sanders of the British army.

There's some Germans running guns to a tribe who have really not taken to white man's rule and the administrators have to put a stop to this before it all gets out of hand. Besides the people mentioned could it be the Dutch trader Carl Esmond, the former Italian administrator Joseph Calleia, or the white hunter Harry Carey. If you can't figure it out you haven't seen too many of these films.

I can't understand for the life of me why Bruce Cabot was in this film. He doesn't attempt any kind of British accent because that would make him look more ridiculous. How many members of the British colony were asked to do this script and must have turned it down. He has one scene where he talks about when this war is over Africans will truly be free. That wouldn't have gone over well with the management at 10 Downing Street whose prime minister said he was not going to see the British Empire dissolved on his watch.

To make sure you got the point after the main action of the film is over with cast members in the congregation, Cedric Hardwicke plays a vicar who is also George Sanders father. In a burned out bombed out church just like in Mrs. Miniver he gives an inspiring war speech in true Hardwicke eloquence.

This United Artists release produced by Walter Wanger got three Oscar nominations. I will say Wanger did not satisfy himself some studio back lot African sets. The films was shot on location in New Mexico to simulate the Somali desert and got a deserved black and white cinematography Oscar nomination for it. Sundown's other nominations for best music score and best art and interior sets.

All this talk about the good work of British colonialism is too much for today's audience. Just look at Somaliland now and see what it has become. But Sundown certainly gave young Gene Tierney an opportunity to look beautiful and exotic on the screen. I doubt this film will get a remake.

Interesting settings and a good cast contribute significantly to this solid drama about intrigue in the desert during the Second World War. In features Gene Tierney in a role that, while perhaps slightly oddly cast, makes particularly good use of her elegant beauty, and also gives her a good variety of material to work with.

The story starts with George Sanders, as a by-the-book British official, sent to take over a desert outpost previously run in a rather lax manner by Bruce Cabot's character. The two have to work out their disagreements over native policy while tracking down an Axis plot to supply arms to unfriendly natives. Tierney comes in as a half-Arab, half-English owner of an extensive trading network, bequeathed to her by her father. Both sides are naturally eager to have her work with them.

It's a good setup, and in general it makes good use of it. There are some good action scenes, but there is also some substance in the character development and in the cross-cultural interactions. The pace is steady, though it might miss a couple of good opportunities to switch into high gear, since there is never a feeling of any particular urgency until quite close to the end.

Sanders and Tierney are both in very good form, which is almost enough in itself to make the movie worth seeing. The story is good, and there is hardly a moment when something of interest is not going on.