La marque du faucon

Notable for being Eartha Kitt's screen debut, this film is a political potboiler with heavy religious overtones. The setting is an unnamed country in pre-independence Africa, where Obam (Poitier) is a newly elected representative. Agitating for independence, he clashes with the colonial government, his firebrand younger brother Kanda (Clifton Macklin) and newly arrived missionary Mr. Craig (John McIntire).

Some of the speeches get tiresome and a ten minute flashback in the middle of the film slows the plot to a crawl, but the always watchable Poitier still manages to carry the film to it's improbable conclusion. Eartha is cast waaay against type as Obam's demure wife Renee, but then again we are treated to a rendition of her first gold record song ("This Man Is Mine") which is more than worth the wait.

It's important to understand the context for "The Mark of the Hawk". Following WWII, colonies around the world were pushing very hard for independence from the mother countries (specifically, France, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands). In some cases, wars for independence broke out (such as in Indonesia and Vietnam) and others they worked with the mother country for gradual independence.

This film is set in an African nation controlled by the Brits...and the local natives, naturally, want the colonizers out and an installation of their own government. Unfortunately, locals distrust even their own elected officials and Obam (Sidney Poitier) has his hands full trying to both work with the British in order to get them to leave AND maintain the good will of his own people. However, his own brother is an angry man and sees Obam as a sellout...and other locals seem like-minded. Will Obam be able to somehow please everyone and navigate this period peaceably? Oh, and as for the hawk...that's a symbol of the radical resistance.

This film has some excellent black actors...not only Poitier but Eartha Kitt and Juano Hernandez. Of course, for that matter, the 'Africans' listed above are also Americans. I wonder how the movie would have been with African and Brits in the leads instead. Who knows?!

So is it any good? Yes. I like that it deals with colonialism and nationalism...topics rarely dealt with in films of the day. It also is quite interesting and was well crafted. Well worth seeing...though Kitt's singing seemed out of place and the film was a tad preachy.

This movie is ultimately about a black African selling out to white colonialists. Not exactly the kind of part that you might expect Sidney Poitier to take on. Considering the year made (1957?) it may just have been that Sidney needed the work. In any case, he does a fine acting job as Obam, a newly elected representative. The same cannot be said for Eartha Kitt - who plays Obam's wife. In a sequence that seems rather out of place she sings her first hit song. A much better acting job is done by Clifton Macklin as Obam's revolutionary brother, Kanda. The tension between the two carries the movie through to it's rather sappy religious-tinged ending. If you are a Poitier fan, it's a must see.

Much has been made of this being Eartha Kitt's first role both in the Trivia section of the IMDb page for the film and in some of the reviews. In fact here first screen role was in the 1954 CinemaScope film New Faces.

Interestingly this does not appear on Eartha's IMDb profile page but if you look up the IMDb entry for New Faces (1954) you will see her listed.

Some reviewers have mentioned the somewhat religious overtones of the ending of this movie. Not surprising when you consider that the production was sponsored by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church.

In colonial Africa, there's a tension-filled rift between the natives and the British, signaled by the title. When a British house has been targeted, a dead hawk is hung upside down on his front porch. The Mark of the Hawk is supposed to become an icon of dread for both audiences and those in the movie, but really, when is a dead, upside down hawk not a bad omen? The heads of both ends of the struggle are John McIntire and Sidney Poitier. John is a missionary with certain reasons for his affection for Sidney, and Sidney is torn between what's expected of him and what he thinks is right. Eartha Kitt makes her film debut as Sidney's wife, and she looks absolutely beautiful while they attend fancy parties and schmooze with dignitaries. If you really like Sidney or Eartha, you can give this movie a try, but there's really only a specific group of moviegoers who will enjoy this one: religious audiences. There's a very strong religious theme throughout the film, one that rivals TV movies at Christmas.