Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

clanciai A surprisingly efficient and startling adventure feature from Africa by Henry Hathaway for being so young and early - this is already Hathaway completely fledged, and it's a very colourful drama although in black and white. Gene Tierney, also very young and fresh, provides the romanticism with glowing colours, and George Sanders for once plays a very unusually honest and heroic role. It's a great adventure, and the cave scenes are gorgeously suggestive in both drama, invention and cinematography. The photo is stupendous, and although rather thin, brief and superficial, it must be deemed as a great film - on a small scale, but nevertheless.

drystyx SUNDOWN is what you might call a minor epic. It is about the old British grandeur. Instead of Heston, we get Bruce Cabot, who still looks King Kong tall, before he was dwarfed by the duke in later films.Gene Tierney's beaut was probably the big marketing device here, and Hathaway directs to make full use of it.The story is one that some people today mistakenly think was normally acceptable as how people viewed life. Knowing people from the era, as they spoke in the sixties and seventies, it is obvious that they thought it was just as silly in 1941 as it is thought of today, the grand British presence in Africa, the "sahib", the almighty "bwana".Set during World War II, we get a look at the different countries and how their people naturally allied themselves. The Italian is a proud man, willing to live with the British, for instance.What you will probably note most about this film is that it doesn't adhere to modern acceptable story telling standards. It is expository with sudden jumps from one idea to another, particularly at the end, which seems to come out of nowhere. That doesn't mean it is bad story telling. It just isn't what we're taught today.Full of fairly common clichés, it doesn't dwell too much on any one of them, and proceeds to tell a story with believable characters.

bkoganbing Sundown is a wartime morale boosting film that has not worn well over the years. The only thing eternal about it is Gene Tierney whose beauty is ageless.Gene's an exotic Arab woman who comes into an outpost now run by the British in what is now Somalia. The British have recently taken it over from the Italians in Africa and Bruce Cabot is running the civil administration. Coming to handle the military end is Major George Sanders of the British army.There's some Germans running guns to a tribe who have really not taken to white man's rule and the administrators have to put a stop to this before it all gets out of hand. Besides the people mentioned could it be the Dutch trader Carl Esmond, the former Italian administrator Joseph Calleia, or the white hunter Harry Carey. If you can't figure it out you haven't seen too many of these films.I can't understand for the life of me why Bruce Cabot was in this film. He doesn't attempt any kind of British accent because that would make him look more ridiculous. How many members of the British colony were asked to do this script and must have turned it down. He has one scene where he talks about when this war is over Africans will truly be free. That wouldn't have gone over well with the management at 10 Downing Street whose prime minister said he was not going to see the British Empire dissolved on his watch.To make sure you got the point after the main action of the film is over with cast members in the congregation, Cedric Hardwicke plays a vicar who is also George Sanders father. In a burned out bombed out church just like in Mrs. Miniver he gives an inspiring war speech in true Hardwicke eloquence.This United Artists release produced by Walter Wanger got three Oscar nominations. I will say Wanger did not satisfy himself some studio back lot African sets. The films was shot on location in New Mexico to simulate the Somali desert and got a deserved black and white cinematography Oscar nomination for it. Sundown's other nominations for best music score and best art and interior sets.All this talk about the good work of British colonialism is too much for today's audience. Just look at Somaliland now and see what it has become. But Sundown certainly gave young Gene Tierney an opportunity to look beautiful and exotic on the screen. I doubt this film will get a remake.

classicsoncall You almost lose track of the story whenever Gene Tierney's on screen in this picture, absolutely gorgeous with an air of exotic mystery to boot. It's curious to me how many reviewers for the film on this site take it for granted that the Nazis were behind the treachery and gun smuggling going on in the story. However, there's no mention of Nazis, no German characters, and if you didn't know any world history, you'd be hard pressed to place the action during World War II. That's a reasonably good guess however, given Pallini's (Joseph Calleia) competent dissertation on a global power's strategy to take over the world with Africa as a linchpin. The emphasis on Africa doesn't take on much significance in hindsight, but still makes for a good story.It's interesting how the writers worked a native curse into the story with that 'one man of six' will die before it's over. Then white hunter Dewey (Harry Carey) arrives and things get moving. I had to control a chuckle when Marc Lawrence first showed up here as the Arab gun runner Hammud. He's played so many villains in his career that it wasn't unusual to cast him as a foreigner, but he looked a bit out of place here. Was that supposed to be an Afro?So Gene Tierney's top billed here, but it seems to me Bruce Cabot did the heavy lifting as Commissioner Crawford, aka Bwana Mkubwa. George Sanders manages to earn respect as Major Coombes after arriving on scene with a hell-bent for leather military style before realizing he'd better switch tactics to get the most out of his people. Too bad Pallini couldn't hang around to the end of the story, he was an interesting character.I didn't think I would like this one as it first started but it had a way of working it's mystery. The finale seemed to have a contrived heroic feel to it, but after all, the good guys had to come out on top, and the Cabot/Tierney romance didn't get in the way of the story. The closing scene with Sir Cedric Hardwicke extolling the virtues of freedom loving Brits was inspiring even if a bit forced. Still, I'd rather have the Allies win the day than those pesky, invisible Nazis.