King Solomon's Mines

Another of the movies that I had on my DVR and that is coming up again soon on TCM is MGM's 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines. As usual, in order to be able to do a post on the upcoming airing, I sat down to watch the copy already on my DVR. That airing is coming up tonight at 8:00 PM, so now you get the review.

After some nice opening credits in Technicolor with backdrops of Africa as well as informing us what parts of Africa the movie was actually filmed in (what are now Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and eastern DRC), we're informed that the action is set in 1897 Africa, so when Britain was in control of a lot of east Africa, and when Europeans felt they had a moral duty to "civilize" the so-called Dark Continent. One such person is Allan Quatermain (Stuart Grainger), a safari guide working in British East Africa for the past 15 years, which is much longer than the average life span for a (white) guide in that part of the world.

Having come to the region from the UK is Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr). She's the wife of Henry, an adventurer who apparently had the crazy idea that King Solomon got his gold and gems from mines somewhere to the west of the British colony, in a part of Africa that's unexplored by the white man, and that supposedly many of the local tribes don't want to venture towards. Henry sent Elizabeth a "map" of the quality suitable for Hollywood movies of the era, where you wonder how anybody can find anything. Elizabeth would like Henry to guide her to where she thinks her husband would be if he's still alive, and to help she's brought along her brother John (Richard Carlson).

Allan isn't certain whether he wants to take on the job, but Elizabeth is offering a lot of money. Allan is a widower with a son back in England, and taking this job would help secure his son's future, so Allan reluctantly decides to take the job. It doesn't take long for Allan to think that perhaps he was right not to want to take on this job, as Elizabeth is one of those Victorian women who seems decidedly unsuited to going out on this type of adventure, being scared of every little thing and not properly provisioned.

Along the way, however, Elizabeth starts to become a bit more self-sufficient. She and Allan also go through that movie trope of developing feelings for each other even though there's still the question of whether Elizabeth's husband is alive or dead. The expedition also faces any number of westen tropes about Africa from the period: an animal stampede; local tribes that the guides aren't certain whether they're friendly; and a lot of wildlife. Much of this serves as a hook for a lot of lovely scenery.

There are a few set-pieces, if you will, in and among all the travelogue. One involves finding a white man out in the middle of nowhere (Hugo Haas), although Quatermain eventually determines who that white man is. There's also a lone African from a tribe Quatermain doesn't recognize at all; that guy joins them and his back story is revealed at the end of the movie. And then everyone gets to a cave that may just be what Henry thought was the titular mine. But is there anything there, and will they find Henry?

To be honest, I found large parts of King Solomon's Mines to be slow, largely because the characters have to trek quite a ways to get to the putative mines. There's only so much they can do along the way. With that in mind, the scenery might just be the best part of the movie. For 2024, that's a bit of a sad statement, only because getting color footage of exotic places is so commonplace. For 1950, when the movie was released, it would have been a big deal to audiences, and it's no surprise that this was one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

My comments about the scenery are not to imply that King Solomon's Mines is a bad movie, however. It's more that looking at it from almost 75 years on, it's the sort of stuff we've seen so many times since. But this would have been one the earliest, most previous Africa movies using studio backlots to stand in badly for Africa. So definitely give the 1950 King Solomon's Mines a watch.