Counter-programming tonight with a postwar decolonization film. 😅 #SomethingofValue, MGM, 1957, Hollywood tackles decolonization and the Mau-Mau revolt. #Sidney P (not Powell 😅) #KenRenard #TheGREATWilliamMarshall, on @PrimeVideo #WhatsAlyssaWatching
Rock Hudson and Sidney P - brothers from another mother đŸ€Ł. The music at the beginning of this film is f*king hokey. But that’s what happens when you hire a European composer to write “African” music in a studio film.
Fucking atrocities to lead us off. And dogs nearby. At least this is not Gone With The Wind (which was also MGM!). As Jon Cowans argues, postwar decolonization films can be...er...conflicted.
Blech, Rock just killed a zebra and Sidney’s going to help him kill a lion. Better throw some exotic adventure in your decolonization film if you’re a Hollywood director!
Rock is the good white who enables the audience to think racism is only the province of bkwd whites. But still the screenwriter is in earnest. This is 1957 & this film is going to screen in the South! & this is an anti racist message film-at least in part, when not killing 🩁s
Haha Rock just rescued Sidney & is literally carrying him on his back. You can’t have a Hollywood anti-racist film without a white hero! But the intermingling of their male bodies was still an FU to many viewers in 1957!!
I am not going near the tradition versus modernity stuff in this film. I’m just gonna hang on til William Marshall gets on screen & starts with the đŸ”„ anti-colonial orations!
There’s some deep shit assimilation v association stuff in this film too. I’m tired of the inevitable white colonist preamble & want to get to the revolt planning!!
Go Sidney! Reject colonial ideology and free your Dad from British prison! (Still he’s in a Western suit now. The visuals!)
The fucked up “native” choreography in here is... I don’t even know what to say. But at least Rock just said that Sidney was guilty of only one thing: being Born While Black. Postwar decolonization film, folks!
30 minutes in!! Finally William Marshall is on the scene, an anticolonial Kenyan intellectual flying back from London (we’re in 1952 now).
But still this is also a white people romance film, cuz you can’t do an antiracist message film without it! (If you’re a postwar studio director!)
Is Marshall our Fanon, saying colonialism can only be overthrown through violence, and Poitier our Feraoun with qualms? Or is Sidney naĂŻve? I will have to keep watching!
Keep in mind that though this film is set in Kenya, all our anti-colonial actors are West Indian! Ken Renard wax from Trinidad, Juano Hernandez from Puerto Rico and Sidney from the Bahamas. That is, except for William Marshall, Gary Indiana’s Pride & joy b4 the Jackson 5 :-)
1950s white womanhood is this film too... I’m glad I’m tweeting for fun and not on deadline to write about this mess! (A perfect example of the postwar decolonization film in its “conflicting racial messages,” as Ellen Scott would say!)
Dana Wynter is a poor woman’s Joan Collins, & I need to slap all these racist colonists (& in this scene, the screenwriter too! ) Will someone please put William Marshall back on the screen???
Shit, I think this is a Western-gaze Bois Caiman scene as the MauMau Uprising is going to start. If they drink and kill a pig, I’m going to be PISSED OFF.
Nope, we just have to watch as they mutilate each other and get rid of their western clothes. BLECH
The actress Barbara Foley played Sydney’s (Kenyan) wife. I can’t remember a gorgeous bald Black woman in a studio film before recently! But I can’t even find a picture of her on the Internet let alone much information! She also acted on Broadway.
Look at how gorgeous she is!
Rock Hudson just called Africa a woman, & his new bride just said she can do some things that Africa can’t. <vomit>

The anti-racism to stupid shit ratio in this film is far too low for me. I’m a masochist so I’m going to keep watching so you don’t have to! Where’s William M??
Haha I just called this bitch’s line. This film is too formulaic... Her paleness is so weaponized here.
Yep, it was a chimera that this was a Fanonian film. Def not! The other uprising participants try to get Sidney to kill a sweet white child. Of course Sidney will not! Will they turn on him or will he meet the tragic end the film suggests he probably deserves?
LOL now it’s a horror flick! Those ticket buyers were getting every fucking genre in one film. (Still I prefer this to Disney, it’s edifying to watch this schlock 😝)
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