Haiti: 'Land of Dark Majesty'

Haiti: 'Land of Dark Majesty' (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This TravelTalks short takes us to Haiti where we learn that in 1492 Columbus crashed there and is one reason why the majority of people in this Latin American place speak French (for what that's worth). We also learn that the majority of people there are black and that originally the place had been used for trading slaves, which led to a great battle for their freedom. With three million people now there, we learn about the local markets where someone could buy a pound of peas for a penny or be given bananas for free. This is another nice entry in the series with FitzPatrick once again delivering some great narration and keeping the film moving at a nice pace. While watching the film you can't help but feel that a lot of the stuff dealing with the slave days is overlooked to make the U.S. look a tad bit better as they're never mentioned when these days were discussed.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras to Haiti, where, at the command of cinematographer Robert Carney, they briefly show some street scenes in Cap-Haitien. Then he spends the remainder of this Traveltalk talking about Henri Christophe and his reign as king of Haiti. FItzpatrick seems to be in admiration of Christophe, prefacing his perorations of his accomplishments with comments which were pretty racist even for 1941.

The copy of this travelogue which plays on Turner Classic Movies is in pretty good condition, with a lovely sunset shot to close it out.

This starts with market day in the small town of Cap Haitien. Then it's the military. Then it's an old palace and an old citadel of the despotic 19th century king Henri Christophe. I was hoping for local colors of the regular folks but the market is only a small section. After that, it's a ruin here and a ruin there. It's a ruin ruin everywhere. They talk about a long dead dictator that nobody has ever heard of. I think this series is more interested in static monuments and Haiti does not really have that.