This is the second of a series of essays commemorating films that will be included in this summer’s D. K. Holm Film Festival. Dark of the Sun will be screened for free at 8:45 PM (or whenever it gets dark) on Thursday, May 29, 2008 . For more information about showtimes and venues, contact Lance Kramer at kramer.lance@gmail.com or 503-231-3561.

If you’re going to do a journey action film, you’ve got to have a drunk doctor.

That’s one of the many rules for the perfect action film to be found in Dark of the Sun, the now-obscure merc film released in 1968, and starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown. The film is kicking off the 10-movie D. K. Holm Film Festival on Thursday night, May 29th.

It is also narratively imperative that the alcoholic doctor deliver a baby. And that there be a blonde woman for various protag- and antagonists to fight over. And, when the savages who are the main threat to the journeying party finally close in, a noble man must press a gun to his wife’s head to save her from the brutal ravishment in store.

All of these elements go back at least to John Ford’s Stagecoach, which was written by Dudley Nichols and an uncredited Ben Hecht, from the story, “Stage to Lordsburg” by Ernest Haycox. Elegant gambler John Carradine does not pull the trigger, as his equivalent in Dark does, but the gesture is enduring. Dark of the Sun is based on a 1965 novel by Wilbur Smith, the popular Rhodesian writer, and given these familiar elements, the film is thus not “original” in the conventional sense. But in pop products, you don’t need to be original. It’s all how the elements are presented.

Also known as The Mercenaries, the film is directed by Jack Cardiff, the great cinematographer of many Michael Powell movies, and director in his own right of about 12 features. His approach is a solid enthusiasm, a methodical attention to the plot line. This solidity is what makes Dark of the Sun a textbook action film, a resource for anyway seeking to write or direct a Saturday afternoon action film. You’d think that it would be a favorite film of Steven Spielberg, but no, it is Quentin Tarantino who has championed the film in the past, no doubt because of Jim Brown’s fine, understated performance.

Cardiff mentions Dark of the Sun in passing towards the end of his autobiography, Magic Hour, but only to say that developed a great friendship with Taylor and that the film, though set in the then Belgian Congo, was shot in Jamaica, which is the only place the production could find the right steam engine train. Cardiff also noted that, though the film was criticized for its violence at the time, his research into conditions in the Congo at the time unearthed images more sanguinary than what he put in the film.

Dark of the Sun concerns the three-day mission of mercenary Captain Bruce Curry (Taylor) to travel 300 miles north through rebel territory on a train laden with 40 troops, to rescue the residents of a still-unattacked white outpost called Port Reprieve. His assignment comes from new Congolese president Ubi (Calvin Lockhart) who is in league with European diamond brokers. It just so happens that there are $50 million dollars worth of uncut diamonds in the town’s time-locked safe. Curry’s most trusted aide is Ruffo (Brown), who fights for political rather than mercenary reasons, and they have a great friendship. If Brown’s performance is rather underrated, so is Taylor’s, in this and several other movies. The Australian-born actor blends a Grantish charm with circus athleticism, making him a sort of poor man’s Burt Lancaster. The two work well together. There is a great conversation between Curry and Ruffo, well-acted and well-written (by credited screenwriters Quentin Werty and Adrian Spies) about 35 minutes into the film, a great revelatory and testimonial chat that most modern action films probably wouldn’t pause for.

The film is produced by George Englund, once married to Cloris Leachman and later an associate, as it were, of Marlon Brando, and though liberal in spirit the film hews to the racial notions of the time, which is what has probably minimized its legacy. Africans are either bug-eyed rapine savages, tools of the Europeans, or Man Fridays. Yet in what other film would the dignity of a minor character such as Kataki (Bloke Modisane) be honored? In any case, there are numerous great moments in the film: Curry’s put down of a fat journalist; the assembly of the train by night (anticipating the reconstruction of the trucks in Sorcerer), the air attack on the train which eventually hides in a tunnel, an unnecessary fight between Curry and the film’s villain, ex-Nazi Henlein (Peter Carsten; voiced, I suspect by Paul Frees, the noted announcer and character actor [seen as a scientist in The Thing]), the suspense of waiting for the bank’s time lock to open as the rebels, called Simbas, are getting closer, and the mercenary team’s clandestine re-entering of the town during a Simbanese riot.

Best of all, though, is the great catchy score by Jacques Loussier, which is up there with the great scores by Herrmann and Morricone, and so unlike the tuneless sawing of modern film composers such as Howard Shore. Loussier is still alive as of this writing, but has only composed scores intermittently through the 1990s, after doing Melville’s Le Doulos and the Bond film You Only Live Twice.

If as a viewer I have a “problem” with Dark of the Sun, as an action film and as a work of art, it is the pro forma and unnecessary death of an important character and the forced morality of the final sequence. But one sort of expects lousy endings from films made before the ‘70s. In any case, up until those moments, Dark of the Sun is the perfect action film.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.