Something of Value

Plot synopsis:
Kikuyu tribal members work on Henry McKenzie's farm in 1940s Kenya. Two young men, Kenyan native Kimani and Henry's son Peter, have grown up together, almost like brothers.
Prejudices surface when Peter's brother-in-law Jeff Newton slaps the face of Kimani after his request to use a rifle. Kimani leaves the farm, but is carried back by Peter after having caught his foot in a trap.
Mau Mau tribesmen plot an insurrection as Kenya's tensions rise. Kimani sides with them and is asked to steal a supply of rifles as a test. He parts ways for many years with Peter, who becomes a safari leader to help raise money for the farm. His fiancee Holly Keith arrives and they intend to marry.
Kimani impregnates the daughter of a Mau Mau tribal elder. A raid on the farm results in the murders of Newton and his children. British forces retaliate by bombing a Mau Mau encampment, taking tribesmen prisoner and torturing them.
Peter wants to continue his life in Africa, but troubles worsen when Holly must fight off Mau Mau warriors. Henry hastily gets her and Newton's wife to safety in Nairobi. Peter goes looking for Kimani, who has been identified as the leader of the Mau Mau raiding party that killed his brother-in-law and Newton's children. They fight to the death, Kimani ultimately falling into a pit of bamboo spikes.

Tags: revenge, avant garde, murder, violence

Review:
And, although at the time this film was made Kenyan independence was only six years away, it is clear that, to almost all the whites, independence and black majority rule are still unthinkable.
Although it's clear that all the whites in the film are British, Hudson just moves right along with his American accent, quite un-self conscious about it all.
The year that the film version of Robert Ruark's novel Something Of Value came out, the first colony of British Africa, the Gold Coast became the independent Republic of Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah.
When we see film like Leonardo DiCpario's Blood Diamond come out fifty years later, you have to wonder whether Africa's many problems will ever be solved in the lifetime of most of us.Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier play childhood friends who grew up side by side in Kenya colony.
But race and racial politics have driven them apart as Poitier has joined the nascent Mau Mau movement whose mission it was to kill all the white settlers and drive them from their part of the continent.
Hudson who believes the races can peaceful exist together in the Kenya colony and soon to be independent country wants to reconcile with Poitier.
The film concerns his attempts to do so.Some very good supporting performances by Dana Wynter, Wendy Hiller, Ivan Dixon, and William Marshall are in Something Of Value.
Best scene in the film other than the final confrontation with Hudson and Poitier is Hudson's father played by Robert Beatty successfully breaking down Mau Mau leader Juano Hernandez into giving up his cohorts.
Beatty's knowledge of the Kikuyu tribe culture comes into play here.The white racist attitudes are exemplified by Michael Pate whose Australian accent makes him sound the most authentically African or the closest to it among the white cast members.Sad to say this most authentic of African stories is still very relevant today as seen by the critical and popular acclaim that Blood Diamond received in 2006.
Hudson, Poitier, and the rest of the cast do some of their best work in Something Of Value..
Sidney Poitier is excellent in this study of Kenya's fight for independence and backlash against their former oppressors.
It was a treat to see young Rock Hudson, beautiful Dana Wynter and the talents of Sidney Poitier and Wendy Hiller.
Having spent a good part of my childhood in East-Africa, I read Robert Ruarks novel Something of Value" (and the semi-follow-up Uhuru") numerous times while living in Tanzania and for a while it was among my favorite novels.
The movie I saw only a few years later and was not too impressed.The story is relatively straight-forward and simple: two African boys, Peter (son of a white settler) and Kimani, a native Kikuyu have grown up together almost like brothers.
Peter becomes a safari-guide and Kimani, disillusioned by the white rule of Kenya and still bearing a grudge against Peters brother-in-law Jeff joins the Mau-Mau movement, who seek to take control over the country and eject / butcher the Whites.
Soon the former best friends become each others mortal enemies and will have to face off in a fight to the death.Some people claimed, that the book is oversimplified and much of the cruelty (generally committed by the Mau-Mau, which are portrayed as a form of terrorist guerrillas, who soon didn't distinguish any longer between butchering their enemies, the Whites, or Kikuyu who opposed to disagreed with their methods.
Compare to contemporary films, for example, "Blood Diamond", "Something of Value" still feels like it has been produced in a Hollywood studio, despite having been filmed in Africa.
Furthermore I was not at all comfortable with the actors, despite me appreciating both Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier.
Sure, Poitier does a far more convincing job (especially the accent) but again, looks nothing like an African from this part of the continent.It would also be unfair to say that the rest of a crew did a bad job, but one would really wish for a remake (this coming from somebody who has a general dislike for the concept of remakes, reboots, etc), something grittier, more realistic and it's not that there is a shortage of capable African actors of all colors these days.
Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier are excellent in Something of Value.
Just watched this Rock Hudson-Sidney Poitier movie on YouTube.
After casting him in The Blackboard Jungle which was a success, writer/director Richard Brooks then put Poitier in this drama about the uprising of a Kenyan revolutionary group called Mau-Mau of which Kimani Wa Karanja-Sidney's character-is forced to join after seeing his father (Ken Renard) uphold a custom that involves a murder resulting in his arrest by English colonialists.
Hudson plays Peter McKenzie whose family had long settled in Africa and he himself had befriended Kimani when they were kids but that could be no more because of the unfair social rulings.
Also featuring compelling supporting performances by Wendy Hiller as Peter's sister Elizabeth and Dana Wynter as Holly, Peter's wife.
This movie is really something of value.Rock HUdson's character says "we steal their earth and their religion,we 've got to give them something of value instead".Actually,Richard Brookes applied to Africa what he 'd done two years back with "the last hunt" where the white men killed the buffalos and starved the Indians.They even despised their belief by killing even the White animal.Preceded by "Simba" an English movie starring Dirk Bogarde the screenplay of whichshows a lot of similarities with "something of value' Brooks 's work seems nevertheless superior ,because it has very strong scenes:Poitier,smashing the mirror with disgust after the killing,the informer killed on the barbed wire by the other prisoners;the old man ,afraid of thunder.This last scene may seem naive ,nay insulting for the natives ,but it was fifty years ago.People who criticize the movie should think about it:in 1957,it was a courageous movie,as "the last hunt" was..
Rock Hudson stars as the son of a white farmer living in East Africa near Nairobi circa 1950; he's as close as a brother to Sidney Poitier--portraying sort of a slave-cum-porter--until the laws of the domineering British interfere with the black people's superstition-laden ways of living.
Ruark's book of racial upheavals and issues (loyalties, betrayals, and injustices) has been adapted well for the screen by writer-director Richard Brooks, although Hudson's character doesn't have many dimensions (and he looks too old to be boyhood pals with Poitier, anyway).
A romance sub-plot between Hudson and pretty-but-piqued Dana Wynter doesn't provide enough substantial release from the horror and strife surrounding them, and Poitier's final scenes are geared towards narrative action and not character motivation.
Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier star in this Richard Brooks drama on race.
Throughout most of Sidney Poitier's career as an actor that primarily appeared in race relations dramas, he played African- Americans whereas, in this one, he actually plays an African, a Kenyan in fact, named Kimani Wa Karanja.As children, Peter (Rock Hudson) and Kimani grow up doing everything together.
When Kimani's father (Ken Renard) is imprisoned indefinitely for following a custom deemed barbaric by the ruling class of British colonists, he runs away to join a criminal gang (led by Juano Hernandez's character) that later becomes an insurgency group dubbed Mau Mau; read your history if you're unfamiliar with the real back-story.Predictably, Peter and Kimani will inevitably meet again on opposite sides of the law.
The movie also features the comely Dana Wynter as Peter's love interest come wife; their relationship parallels that of his aunt Elizabeth (Wendy Hiller) and Uncle Jeff (Robert Beatty).Jeff and two of their children are murdered during the Mau Mau Uprising.
Walter Fitzgerald plays Peter's father, who had been a friend of Kimani's dad and whose knowledge and skills help to end the revolt.Michael Pate plays a White settler that reflects the colonists' racism; William Marshall plays the Black leader that organizes the revolution starting with a meeting in Nairobi.Richard Brooks directed and adapted the screenplay from Robert C.
This Rock Hudson, Dana Wynter film deals with the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya in 1952.
She has few lines to convey.Yes, a racist bigot slapped Sidney Poitier several years before the uprising.
Poitier turns smoker and militant.Even more ridiculous than the sub-plot is the fact that Wendy Hiller, who really looked her age in 1957, becomes pregnant in this film and gives birth!
It is, however, perhaps relevant to suggest that the novel and film of 'Some thing of Value' be considered in the light of Ruark's 1962 novel 'Uhuru' which revisits basically the same characters (the names change)after Kenyan independence.
Seeing it 60 years later, I'm amazed that it was considered a suitable movie for children at a matinee in that era of rigorous censorship.There is strong stuff in this film about the Mau-Mau insurrection in Kenya in the 1950's.
It was a film I remembered vividly, especially the scenes of Mau-Mau rituals, but also for the haunting background music and for Dana Wynter who just seemed so perfect.At the time, colonisation was ending.
Britain, which had coloured so much of the globe pink, would sometimes just haul down the flag and sail away, but in some African countries with generations of white farmers and landowners, things were trickier.That was the background to Richard Brook's film of Robert Ruark's novel.Peter McKenzie (Rock Hudson) and Kimani (Sidney Poitier) have grown up together in Kenya, but find that their different skin colours and cultures are forcing them apart.There is interesting information on the making of the film in "Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks" by Douglas K.
In an act not without danger, Brooks and Hudson went to a secret location to meet members of the Mau-Mau.Brooks could be a bully and alienated cast and crew except for favourites such as Sidney Poitier whom he protected from discrimination in segregated Kenya.
He was rude to Dana and harsh with Rock, but he created tension to get the reactions he wanted from the actors.Miklos Rozsa, the epic film score maestro, came up with different music for this film.
Also shot in Kenya, it too featured Mau-Mau attacks on white farmers, but the whole thing seemed condescending towards the Kenyans while Brook's film is more even-handed with treachery and massacres on both sides.Both films end with a scene of a Kenyan baby, symbolising the key to the nation's future..
"Something of Value" is a film about the so-called 'Mau Mau Rebellion' which took place through much of the 1950s in Kenya.
The fact that it was made there and the uprising was still going on do make this an unusual movie.The story begins by showing the contempt that many of the white British colonists have towards the native Kenyans.
Because of this, it's very easy to see how these black men and women would become disaffected by British rule...and Peter (Rock Hudson) can see the wicked way these folks are treated.
He is especially appalled to see his friend Kimani (Sidney Poitier) slapped around and treated like dirt.
At the same time, the film tries to look at both sides and shows the brutal way in which the Mau Maus tore apart the white colonists.
How will all this resolve itself and what will happen to these two friends who are now on opposite sides in the conflict?This is generally a very good film, though I wonder why Rock Hudson was chosen for the movie.
As for Poitier and Juano Hernandez and many of the other black actors, they were more convincing in their roles and at least approximated the right accents.
"Something of Value" (1957) directed by Richard Brooks like that in itself it's a segregated specimen as genre in extinction of ancient black humor now as well told as positive discrimination, which means that memory and perception view from liberal democratic from the past itself is always old and not in mood.
The scene of the mentor chief in sermon of life, with some of the first group of insurgents, is still of master in black and white screening and screaming.There are some characters of hunters with bwana's spirits and in itself this movie has scenes that by its crudity shocking a while inside the home of a given farmer, constructed as a resort near a kind of precarious compound for natives a half there in unrest, which took the viewers for the tragedy and switched targets during the fighting, but its melodramatic realism surpasses the confusion by the clarification of the strengths in presence and that holds the concerned characters of the colonization in its diversified reaction, before the lack of local institutions to compromise with the unlocked way of the people, by whom had taking as peasants and servants the way of uncontrolled answer to the oppression.
This movie is a failed compromise between father and son at the pace for substituting oppression by religion and civilized youth by owners against employees of the soil without changing costumes nor structure of the soil, with a local chief and a young Mau Mau in enraged and prolonged injustice, deep both in violence that caught this specific colonial situation at the brink of irrationality and army genocide by lack of comprehension for the standing that the African continent meant against European presence before independence.
As if things were like that in Kenya at the same time, that others out of this territoriality were also thinking less in such a dramatic structure, without enough presence to understand that phase of the fighting, without rules than terror and unrest out of democratic values of the colonists at the time.
No way out at this stage of the movie, only waiting for the grow up of the black baby belonging to the killed young revolutionary - in 1954, Dedan Kimathi from Aberdare forest guerrilla whose evocation is made here in this movie three years after - at the time of awakening, as premonitory it was the book from where Brooks took his screenplay..
Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier grew up together as children, and now in their young adulthood, they're still incredibly close.
Rock tries to explain that it's just the way things are, but Robert Beatty, the mean brother-in-law, intervenes.
Rock is heartbroken and Sidney bursts into tears—I actually turned the movie off during that scene, I was so upset.After having a glass of water, taking a walk outside, and giving myself a talking-to, I decided to turn the movie back on and continue watching it.
So, I dried my tears and pressed play.The rest of the film follows Sidney as he runs away from home and joins a rebellious group who fight back against their British captors.
Interesting story of the final years of colonialism in Africa..
This film examines the post-war struggle for Kenyan independence resulting in the State of Emergency set up during the Mau Mau uprising against white settlers and African 'collaborators' in the 1950s, at a time when British Colonialism was in retreat.
Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier are childhood friends who become enemies when Poitier joins the violent Kenyan revolt, and Wendy Hiller and Walter Fitzgerald play white settlers trying to come to terms with change, unlike the Robert Beatty and Michael Pate characters who support the status quo and regard the Africans as inferiors.
The Mau Mau build-up is handled well, as is Poiter's gradual disillusionment with white rule, while finding it difficult to accept the violence of the Mau Mau. The Juano Hernandez character who administers the Mau Mau oaths is strongly influenced by his tribal religion and this provides the rather unconvincing reason for his change of heart and ultimate betrayal of his fellows.
The vulnerability of the British settlers in the bush is evident and the degree of of violence, whether implied or shown, is unusual for the time (the picture was given an X certificate in the UK by the British Board of Film Censors which meant you had to be at least 16 to see it), and the story moves at a steady pace as directed by Richard Brooks.
Sidney Poitier and Rock Hudson portray two Kenyans, raised as near brothers, who find their paths in life diverging wildly as they enter young manhood.
After suffering indignity at the hands of white men and seeing his father imprisoned by the colonial authorities, Poitier's Kimani becomes a freedom fighter/terrorist within the "Mau Mau" insurgency.
Poitier blows him off the screen, of course, and we wish that the film gave them equal time (where was the romance between Kimani and his wife?), but Hudson isn't the total loss that some of the reviewers here have made him out to be.
Indeed, he could have attempted an accent, but that would have been dangerous; surely Poitier mastered his Kenyan accent because he had much more to lose, and to gain, from a film concerning political turmoil in Africa.The film struggles to maintain some kind of balance; it depicts the Mau Mau as thoroughly "savage", yet also reveals the torture and lies of the British colonialists.
Some parallels between the "equal rights" demanded by Kimani and the situation in America at the time must have made some distributors and audiences nervous, but the film does not try to push these parallels in any obvious way.Before closing, mention should be made of Miklos Rozsa's extraordinary score; indeed, extraordinary even for Rozsa, as it combines the whine of the electronic theramin with "tribal" rhythms and chanting..
But it still, I think, gives you a sense of the time and the tensions, and shows us once again how futile -- and just plain wrong -- the earlier white domination of Africa was.
Rock Hudson is very good here...except for one scene which stuck out because he was smiling in a situation where that was not appropriate.
Dana Wynter is excellent as Hudson's young wife; not sure why she wasn't a more popular actress.
Sidney Poitier has any number of films with a stronger performance, but he's good here.