Good history reminder

Posted by Jim Mayor on Oct 21st 2022

Cry, the Beloved Country (1951) is a moving adaptation of Alan Paton’s book of the same name. It takes place in South Africa in the early days of apartheid, which was n place from 1948 to 1991. Reverend Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) is a poor rural priest whose children have abandons the poor rural life for the big city – Johannesburg – like most poor rural young people, once the make it to the city they forget their families. So the poor guy sets out to check on his son and daughter. Thankfully he arrives safely and is taken under the wing of a young priest, Reverend Msimangu, played by a young Sidney Poitier. Kumalo finds things much worse than he expected, and only bad things happen.

The point of the film is primarily to show the affects of apartheid. It might help to note the words from Wikipedia pertaining to the making of the movie, which was the first major film shot in South Africa. “Sidney Poitier and Canada Lee and producer/director Zoltan Korda informed the South African immigration authorities that Poitier and Lee were not actors but were Korda's indentured servants; otherwise, the two black actors and the white Director would not have been allowed to associate with each other while they were in the country.”

This was Lee’s last movie, he died in 1952. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if he was really ailing or was just a great actor.