Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 13-August-06
Spoiler Rating: Low

King Solomon's Mines (1950)

When I visit friends with cable TV I'm amazed at some of its offerings. How can there be round-the-clock programming devoted entirely to gardening, military history, or food? Are that many people that fascinated by these subjects? How often does the pool of knowledge about them expand? Wouldn't the creative minds behind these channels exhaust the worthwhile topics in six months, a year at the most?

A travel channel makes sense to me, however, because I choose to view the world as a boundless sea of explorational possibilities. (People could argue that there are as many edibles as destinations, but I send a wet raspberry in their direction.) Who doesn't dream of flying, boating, driving, or hiking to some beautiful spot which offers insight, inspiration, or relief from the daily grind? Just thinking about adventuresome places is almost as good as going there. And thinking about people cool enough to inhabit such places turns daydreams into fantasy, which is why movies (and books) like "King Solomon's Mines" have been popular for a long while. This flick is essentially a travelogue interrupted by moments of dialogue and sexual tension involving a glamorous hero. It's not great storytelling, but it's pretty good escapism.

The adventuresome place in this case is central Africa circa 1900, where legendary game hunter Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger) receives an offer he can't refuse. A British lady (Deborah Kerr) puts up a huge sum of money to mount a search party for her husband, who disappeared on the trail of a fabled diamond mine. Quatermain agrees to lead the expedition to provide for his son in England, despite the fact that he doesn't trust the lady's motives and doesn't believe they will survive the journey into uncharted lands. The fact that his employer is ravishing isn't a major motive, since her brother (Richard Carlson) joins them as a chaperone. (Ever notice that Kerr's characters often appear unobtainable? Such is the ethereal quality of her beauty.)

Off they go across the rough and varied terrain, where the camera captures their every encounter with lazy crocodiles, creepy scorpions, stampeding zebras (nifty), snakes, rhinos, insects, primates, gazelles, and felines of various stripe (or spot, as it were). Minutes go by without talking, after which Quatermain gives his charges a lesson about wildlife or life itself. (Like any romantic outdoorsman, he's tough, buff, wise, and frequently unshirted. The greying sideburns, I assume, are a '50s bonus.) Also of voyeuristic interest are the native tribes they meet along the way, with whom Quatermain speaks as an equal and towards whom the movie shows delightfully little condescension. Naturally, the lady is prone to exhaustion and distress, which necessitates her leaning on Quatermain both literally and figuratively. Can love bloom between such strong-willed individuals on such a helpless quest in a cruel land? I can tell you that lust does, anyway, without spoiling any part of the plot.

The human drama is actually well written and acted even though it's mostly filler. Granger and Kerr enjoy a flinty initial scene which makes you wonder what both characters are really about, and the explanation develops into an interesting one. Still, "King Solomon's Mines" is chiefly designed to carry you away — a real motion picture. It was seductive at the time of its release and may have grown more so now that exotic lands, like a good rutabaga, are hard to find.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.