H Rider Haggard's novel is an adventure classic, a wonderful tale of white hunters, missing explorers, lost kings and buried treasure.
This big budget MGM somehow succeeds in draining most of the excitement from it - I had vague memories of enjoying this as a child, maybe I got it mixed up with the 1937 version. I was surprised how dull it was. It was a popular success on release, one suspects due to two things (OK maybe three - it's a great concept): the star team of Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger, and the location footage.
Granger is also very good - all tanned with grey temples, deep voiced (although his articulation is a little muffled at times), playing the part of Quartermain to the manor born (well a version of it- he's not quite the part in the novels but he plays a distinct interpretation of it - and I think he's better than Errol Flynn would have been, the original choice for the role - Errol was perhaps a bit too close to seed at this time); he seems to have taken a leaf out of James Mason's "I hate women" persona.
The location footage was then rare, and includes plenty of Watusi's, snakes, lions, rhinos, etc.
Shooting on this was a troublesome experience - the original director was bizarrely Compton Bennett, who came to fame on a tormented musical drama, The Seventh Veil - why they gave him this, an adventure tale crying out for a John Huston, is a mystery, and it's no surprise that he ended up leaving the film with Andrew Marton finishing the job. Marton obviously was skilled at logistics but this could have used someone better at drama - it's too much like a travelogue hooked on location photography, with three adventurers walking through Africa: waterfall -excitement - snake - excitement - desert - excitement - natives -excitement. Because you know Granger and Kerr are going to make it, it's not that exciting - you just keep thinking Richard Carlson (as Kerr's brother) will cark it but he never does.
Haggard's novel was full of twists and turns and characters: sparse little Quartermain, brave Curtis, comic relief Goode. Granger and Kerr have a bit to play with here but what is Carlson doing in this story? He does nothing - you keep expecting him to die, or turn evil or something but he doesn't. He's not even comic relief. He is literally a passenger for the whole movie. (The only reason I can think he's in the film is for some exposition between Kerr and him about Kerr's marriage - but she could have done this with Granger).
The king-in-disguise who accompanies them is a striking looking actor but not much screen presence - there's no personality,he's given no scene or moment for us to warm to, he's just there at the side, except at the end when he fights the baddie while our heroes look on passively. So we don't care if he gets his kingdom back. In Haggard's novel we saw that the usurping king was a baddie (what happened to Gagool the Witch?) Here we just have to take their word for it. The best bit is when Kerr, Granger, etc are stuck in the mines themselves.
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