British Lion/Bryanston Seven Arts. Director Alexander Mackendrick; Producer Michael Balcon; Screenplay Denis Cannan; Camera Edwin Hillier; Editor Jack Harris; Music Tristram Cary
Edward G. Robinson
Fergus McClelland
Constance Cummings
Harry H. Corbett
Paul Stassino
Zia Moyheddin
Pic is based on an uneasy, incredible idea [from a novel by W.H. Canaway]. A 10-year-old youngster (Fergus McClelland) is orphaned when his parents are killed in an air raid during the Suez crisis. In a blur he remembers that he has an Aunt Jane in Durban and that Durban is in the South. So he sets out, armed only with a toy compass.
He meets a Syrian peddler who sees in the kid a chance of a reward from Aunt Jane. He meets a rich American tourist but escapes her greedy clutches. Not until he meets up with a grizzled old diamond smuggler (Edward G. Robinson) does the film flicker into some spark of human interest. The old man and the moppet strike up a splendid friendship.
Mackendrick's films usually strike an attitude and have intuition on points of views. Relationships between his key characters are usually more clearly defined and worked on than in this. With the exception of Robinson, looking like a slightly junior Ernest Hemingway, and Paul Stassino, as a glib crook of a guide, the others are cardboard.
(Color) Widescreen. Extract of a review from 1963. Running time: 128 MIN.
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