Cinema: Sanders of the River

Sanders of the River (London Films), an English effort to do for Africa what Hollywood in Lives of a Bengal Lancer did for India, is by far the most elaborate location picture yet turned out by a British studio. Zoltan Korda, brother of famed Producer-Director Alexander Korda, took an expedition to Africa, stayed there four months making background shots of the Congo River, tribal ceremonies among half a dozen brands of savages. At Shepperton-on-Thames. London Films’ copy of an African village, complete with thatched huts, war canoes and burning-stake for prisoners, aroused so much excitement that the Illustrated London News devoted a whole page to reproducing it. To act in the story, derived from Edgar Wallace. Director Korda hired a high-grade black & white cast. Leslie Banks plays District Commissioner Sanders. Paul Robeson is Bosambo, a reformed convict who becomes chief of a small tribe. Nina Mae McKinney (Hallelujah) is his wife. The part of King Mofolaba, a scapegrace chief whose misdemeanors account for most of the action, is ably played by a 77-year-old Negro hair-tonic specialist named Toto Wane. When, inflamed by contraband gin, he executes a white man and then plots to kill and skin Paul Robeson, it is too much for Commissioner Sanders. He turns back from a contemplated trip to England, arrives via airplane, shoots King Mofolaba, rewards Robeson for loyal assistance by making him head chief of all the tribes in his district.

The fault most likely to creep into pictures made on location comes from their producers’ natural reluctance to throw away bits of local color even when these impede their story. Sanders of the River, consequently, is full of native war dances, canoe-paddling, realistic spear-shaking and drum-beating which, no doubt interesting in a travelog, have no place in this narrative. It is distinguished by Michael Spolianski’s curious but usually effective musical score, by Paul Robeson’s vocalizations of lyrics which sound alarmingly like U.S. college football songs, and by Negro acting which is no less genuine because most of the performers have marked English accents.

Good shot: King Mofolaba. summoned to palaver with Sanders, arriving in a hammock with a slave carrying a chair for him to sit on when he gets out.