Cry the Beloved Country

Cry the Beloved Country is so earnest and virtuous that criticism of it seems almost improper--like throwing stones at a nun, say. But I am bound to say that it is a disappointing movie which hardly ever catches the strength and beauty of Alan Paton's novel of the same name from which it was taken.

Why this is so I am not quite sure, but I think the answer lies in the fact that the movie lacks the lyrical streak of the novel. As it stands it is simply a sordid and weighty story of the racial injustice of South Africa. An excellent story, I hasten to add, but one so poignant that it needs relief of some sort. From the very beginning when the old native pastor sets off to seek his lost sister and son in the hellhole of Johannesburg, and through the whole story of his agonies on learning that his sister is a prostitute and his son a murderer, and also in the collateral story of the sufferings of the English landowner whose son is killed, there is little relief to be found in the plot. In the novel this pathos is not oppressive because it is tinged with lyricism. The poignance of the story is enhanced and purified by the beautiful rolling prose in which it is written.

This lyrical side was given full play--perhaps too full--in the musical version of Cry the Beloved Country which appeared a few years ago on Broadway under the name of Lost in the Stars. I have a feeling (I didn't see the play myself) that this emphasis on the lyrical side was at the expense of the social-side, or message, even as the movie loses the beauty by concentrating on the social tragedy. Probably no one will ever capture the full spirit of the book in the dramatic medium.

This is a personal objection to the movie version, which I do not ask the reader to share completely. As a matter of fact I have a suspicion that people who have not read the book may not notice the absence of the lyrical streak and hence not object to the movie version on this ground. But there are a number of technical weaknesses that can be attacked in something nearer to absolute terms.

The film is poorly constructed. The transitions between scenes are sometimes so clumsy as to suggest that a censor had been at work, though I'm quite sure this was not the case. The action is very slow in getting started, and is too often carried on by means of simple two-person conversations. The music is obtrusively loud in spots.

In many ways, too, the story is not so tight and compelling as it should be. Paton set himself the task of trying to find a solution to the terrible racial problem of South Africa; behind his tragic story he is weighing the attitudes of various men and groups toward the problem in the light of the tragic situation.

In the book Paton presents three major schools of thought: the standard white man's desire to keep the natives in their place, the desire of some of the natives to agitate more or less violently for equality, and the Christian approach of brotherly love. In the end he comes to the conclusion that the latter offers the only hope for the future, but the advocates of brotherly love have a hard time winning out over the other beliefs.

Intellectually, then, it is important that all the major opinion be brought out and scrutinized. But the movie version inexplicably omits one whole school of thought, that of the semi-revolutionary natives, embodied in the colored pastor's brother, a great agitator in Johannesburg. This severely damages the intellectual balance of the Christian solution have only to defeat the relatively poor arguments of the white supremacists.

A word about the acting. It is excellent, especially that of Canada Lee in the role of the native pastor, and that of Sidney Poitier as a Young colored priest.

Finally, let not my criticisms keep you from seeing Cry the Beloved Country. It is a good film, for all its flaws, worth ten times its weight in ordinary stuff. John R. W. SMAIL '51