I saw this film on TV recently. Can’t understand the low rating and lack of votes. The story is very thought provoking. Much of which rings true today. We live in a world where terrorism is an everyday occurrence at some part of the world. This film highlights the nonsense of it all.
sharejust watched this on British tv and agree with you,a well made film with an interesting message,which I took to be fanatics destroy the causes they support because the people become more important than the cause they claim to be acting for.
I think the start of the film,with the helicopter broadcasting the message that world war 11 ws over is inaccurate,don'y think Britain had many helicopters in the far east at this time and certainly not Bristol Sycamores which must have been 1950s models.
Interesting note about the helos but they really were inconsequential to the story. It could just as easily been a courier riding up on a motorcycle or a radio announcement that stopped the killing.
shareThe film was one of many colonial police films coming out at the same time which played for world (especially Cold War American) sympathies by playing up the idea of British empire under threat (as opposed to British Empire conquering, subjugating and oppressing multitudes.)
shareActually, the Malayan Insurgency was one of the most pointless wars ever fought...the British were leaving and the Communist insurgents delayed the withdrawal because they wanted to be the ones in charge and wanted to overthrow the British through revolution.
shareIt had an unhappy ending, which was unusual at the time.
shareThe same could be said for the British Empire.
shareYes, it could, Dr. Hess - but fortunately a happy ending for the more than one billion people around the world who were part of the British Empire - for whom the British ended slavery, suttee, thuggery, introduced courts and railroads, a civil service and canals, seaports and principles of law, newspapers and free speech, the freedom to demonstrate and the accountability of leaders to their people, the concept of freedom of religion and the tolerance of other religions, racial and ethnic groups -
none of which principles, concepts and ideas had existed, let alone prevailed, in these nations during the benighted centuries of native rule before the British came.
"none of which principles, concepts and ideas had existed, let alone prevailed, in these nations during the benighted centuries of native rule before the British came"
I say, how presumptuous of you, old chap.
To respond to the thread question, arguably because the film isn't that well known and wasn't a great commercial success. I'd never heard of it before coming across it recently. Though I think the film has aged well and did it's very best to avoid casting stereotypical characters and running a predictable storyline, in its day it didn't appear to be the recipient of any great critical acclaim. Therefore 52 years on, it's just not very well known.🐭
share"none of which principles, concepts and ideas had existed, let alone prevailed, in these nations during the benighted centuries of native rule before the British came"
I say, how presumptuous of you, old chap.
I politely disagree, old chap. Some of the societies, cultures, groups, etc, etc the British visited in their heyday actually had some of the "concepts" going on. For example the Iroquois Confederacy in the Great Lakes region of North America, the Inca Empire in South America (visited by the arch rival Spanish), or the Nok kingdom of Africa.
And remember the movie dealt with communism as the flavor of the week political system.
I agree - saw this at the theater when it first came out and thought "why is no one else making films about the reality of the post-war world?" .. so it's perhaps a little mushy, but still beautifully shot and not a pat Hollywood story at all..
DESERVES MORE VOTES and IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF 7-8 .. I'd give it a 7.8 or so myself
My only regret in life is that I'm not someone else - Woody Allen
I think part of it is that audiences weren't ready for such a downbeat ending...one of the two most admirable characters in the film winds up framed as a terrorist and hanged because she wouldn't betray the Communist leader who had betrayed HER, her lover can't stand to be in Malaya anymore because he's haunted by his failure to save her, and the British High Commissioner who wants to end British rule as peacefully as possible has been dealt an awful setback.
shareI don't think that's the reason for its unpopularity at the box office since the most obvious cinematic parallel is "The Bridge on the River Kwai," which came out seven years earlier (both movies starred William Holden and involved jungle warfare in SE Asia). "Kwai" was a huge hit and yet its climax was way more downbeat than this one.
While "The 7th Dawn" is a worthwhile flick, it lacks the avant-garde artistry of "Kwai" and thus feels stiff and old-fashioned by comparison, which also marred Brando's "The Ugly American" (1963). It's not great like "Kwai," but it's more compelling than "Ugly."
Speaking of stiffness, the sequence involving Ferris (Holden), his mistress (Capucine) and the swooning daughter of the new commissioner (Susannah York) plays so robotic you have to see it to believe it. This is definitely a case where the scene needed rewritten or ad-libbed, anything to make it feel more natural and real.
So this movie had issues beyond it's ending that led to its obscurity.
Still, I like it. It's just no where near the greatness of "Kwai."
A good point...many of the major characters in KWAI don't survive the movie.
share