Darryl Zanuck's biggest male star at Fox was Tyrone Power and as time goes on he constantly tried to created new Tyrone Powers who he'd put in movies that Power didn't want to be in: Rob Wagner, Jeff Hunter, Rory Calhoun and, in this one, Dale Robertson. His female co star is Anne Francis in a role that badly needed Susan Hayward or Linda Darnell. So its very much the B team.
Really Zanuck shouldn't have made it without stars because there's no real reason for this to have been filmed otherwise. Oh I guess it was a best seller and all that. And its fascinating culturally because it concerns the Haitian Revolution - how many other films are set in that period? I'm guessing nil.
But it feels so pointless. Robertson turns up in Haiti trying to get local slave owner Francis to sign over her dead father's property to the US, as he wanted. They wind up doing a lot of running around and escaping from various fighting forces - it's one of those movies where you get the impression the lead duo could be cut out of the film, and nothing would change to the overall plot, which isn't great. Neither Robertson or Francis do anything that key - I guess he helps William Marshall into the compound to kill a traitorous general. And Robertson is a spokesperson for Touissant. But that's about it.
The interesting things about this movie are the bits on the side of the central couple. The black roles are really good - William Marshall gets to play a driven, polygamous, charming revolutionary, very sympathetic; Ken Renard's Touissant gets the halo treatment of, well, white freedom fighters; Roy E Glenn plays a vicious killer. It's got more diversity among its black support characters than any "A" Hollywood film I can remembers.
There's a voodoo ceremony, Napoleon's sister being saucy, the villainous white guy accidentally shoots his on. There's lots of scenes with Robertson in blackface - Francis joins in as well.
Robertson and Francis are disastrously undercast but it's a movie with many fascinating things about it.
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