The High Command

Based upon a novel by Lewis Robinson, who assists with the script, HIGH COMMAND gives us a complex tale of blackmail, murder, and other delights, ranging over two continents and two generations, beginning in 1921 Ireland and concluding in West Africa (most of the film was shot in Nigeria and Gold Coast). General Sir John Sangye (Lionel Atwill), holder of the Victoria Cross and commander of a colonial garrison, in order to help protect his daughter Belinda (Kathleen Gibson) from unsavoury scandal, is forced into making several wrenching decisions, with Atwill giving the finest crafted performance of his career. In his first effort at directing a feature film, Thorold Dickinson displays the fluid work with a camera which marks his distinguished career, and has expertly taken a balance of drama and humour from the script while effectively leading his talented cast into strong performances, notably from Steven Geray, Leslie Perrins, James Mason and Lucie Mannheim. Dickinson, along with cinematographer Otto Heller, benefit from their background in silent cinema, and Ernest Irving's score is adroitly woven into the action, all of which assists in effectuating a masterwork.

This new DVD was in a bargain bin for 50 cents, and is likely only available (in a poor transfer with bad sound) because it provides an vehicle for a very young James Mason. It has the feel of a movie that would have been given to promising young director, along with a trifling budget and an unrealistic shooting schedule. Props seem to have been borrowed from earlier films, much of it is shot on the back lot, and most was probably the first take. The script was a bit too bookish and wasn't revised as needed; consequently the plot turns heavily on some rather minor points that are not given the necessary emphasis, result being that it takes close attention to figure out that the plot actually does make sense and the story is, in principle, quite promising, although weak direction and acting beat it down, with the editor delivering the coup de grace. Yet in these many flaws lies the film's strength: you can see all of the ways in which this is an amateurish production, and in so doing, you can see what they should have done to get it right. In other words, this film tells you a lot about how to make pictures right by showing you how to make them wrong. It shows you a journeyman's picture out of the heyday of the studio era, and in that sense is historically interesting; and finally, if you see the struggles of cast and crew objectively, you can sympathize with them; they started off with a decent script and good intentions, but were defeated by inexperience, limited resources and too little time. Thus this film works, accidentally, as a movie about making movies.

The High Command has the advantage that American made films concerning Africa do not, that being actual location shooting in Africa because the UK was occupying large chunks of it. The story itself did not deal with the jungle per se, but rather is a tedious soap opera involving some of the occupiers.

The story really begins back during the Irish Rebellion in 1921 where during a fit of rage Lionel Atwill murders a man who stole his sweetheart from him and married her. The blame is easily put on the Sinn Fein rebels, but a certain army doctor keeps the ballistic evidence of the crime.

Fast forward fifteen years later to West Africa and Atwill and the doctor are stationed together again. The doctor is murdered, but the blame falls not on Atwill, but another man, James Mason who was thought to be embezzling company funds.

The High Command is static and talky with everybody going around in the best stiff upper lip tradition. We certainly can't let these Africans know that their occupiers morals are less than perfect.

Some good photography of Nigeria and the Gold Coast (later Ghana) is wasted on a trite story with characters you really cease caring about halfway through.

Major General Sir Lionel Atwill, VC, is in a scrape during the Troubles in Ireland, and he winds up shooting the man who married his sweetheart while he was at the Front, earning that Victoria Cross.... although the man's daughter is actually Atwill's. Atwill immediately gets himself reassigned to Ghana as some form of penance. However, when one of his officers is shot, and the corpse's cousin, James Mason, goes on trial for the crime, Atwill fears that his own murder will come out, and blight young Kathleen Gibson's life.

That's the daughter, of either Atwill or the man he killed. It's one of those stiff-upper-lip things that the English seemed to like, once upon a time. I thought it was paced far too slow, and not helped in the least by the poor condition of the copy I looked at. Location shooting on Africa's Gold Coast might have helped, were it not for the poor condition of the print. As it was, it wasn't much fun watching.