"Sundown" Review

 

by Daniel White

Leading up to to America's entry into the second world war was an interesting time in Hollywood. Many of the films made during this period reflect Tinseltown's ambivalent attitude towards the events unfolding overseas. There was a strong isolationist faction in the USA that vehemently opposed the country getting involved in another European struggle, a foreign war as they perceived it. Equally determined were a group of Yanks eager to assist Great Britain as she precariously stood alone fighting Nazi Germany.

Released two months before Pearl Harbor by United Artists, and produced by Walter Wanger, Sundown is veddy veddy pro-British, yet in an odd nod to appeasement, fascist Germany is never mentioned by name.

Bruce Cabot is Bill Crawford, district commissioner of an East African military outpost. Heralding from Ottawa (what better way to explain Cabot's obvious American accent than by making him a Canuck), he runs a rather lax outfit, which newly arrived Major Coombes (the always welcome George Sanders) hopes to tighten up. When guns and ammo are found in hostile native hands, it's up to our intrepid team of brave Brits and their straight-shooting allies to seek out the source of this materiel and destroy it. They are aided in their quest to secure Africa for the Mother Country by the very shapely Gene Tierney (Miss Tierney rocks a midriff-revealing top that momentarily makes all talk of war and "geo political plans" inconsequential).

There is an impassioned speech by Joseph Calleia as an Italian POW addressed to Cabot and Sanders (but in truth to the free world) that implores them to hold on to Africa, "you lose Africa, you lose the war, you lose the world." But again, no mention of the axis powers, only "they" and "them". At this late stage in the game, why was Hollywood still afraid of offending Hitler and his murderous thugs?

Of course, it was impossible to film on location in Africa in 1941, so the Mojave desert and parts of New Mexico are substituted, and actually look (to my easy-to-fool eye) authentic and beautiful. However, the print available on Tubi is so mediocre that it diminishes the impact of the movie considerably. Does anyone know if a pristine copy of Sundown exists? If so, I would be very interested in viewing it.

An enjoyable, if uninspired adventure tale, what makes Sundown of interest is the political message it is conveying (and sometimes not conveying). Decidedly pro-intervention, it has a rousing (if extremely manipulative) speech near the end by a dying Sanders that manages to drag in church, the army, and civilization. And if that were not enough, the next scene has Sander's father, Cedric Hardwicke, as a bishop delivering his eulogy in a bombed out London church. My, my, talk about getting hit over the head by a ten-foot British beam.

Of special interest to the cinema enthusiast is a very young Dorothy Dandridge as the child bride of an African soldier, loyal to the British crown. She is so lovely to look at and even gets to "act" when her patriotic husband is killed in the line of duty. Dorothy and Gene are so impossibly dewy-eyed, with Dandridge still a teenager and Tierney barely 21. Both ladies would end up having very difficult, emotionally charged lives. Two of Hollywood's Women of Many Woes.

With Reginald Gardiner, Carl Esmond, Harry Carey, and Marc Lawrence being his usual nasty self, Sundown as a movie is second-rate, but as war-time propaganda, it's top-notch.