West of Zanzibar

Cannily scheduled during the chilly month of January by Talking Pictures, the second of Harry Watt's two Technicolor tours of the Dark Continent boasts excellent photography of the local wildlife fairly well integrated into the action (although described in the credits as made at Ealing Studios).

The narrator describes at the outset that the 'white gold' of smuggled ivory has taken the place of the 'black gold' of slavery; which at least was a step in the right direction.

But the conflict of interests between European tree-huggers and black 'smugglers' continues to worry away today.

West of Zanzibar is a real historical oddity. Besides being the only sequel that Ealing Studios ever produced, the film does highlight true to life conservation and social issues that still impact our contemporary world some 65 years later. It's just a pity that in searching for solutions to these issues, it's frequently inferred that the white colonial masters often have the best ideas, whilst playing down past colonial involvement which may have led to the problems beginning.

I have no idea why these Bob Payton yarns were so popular at the time. It can't have been the magnetic charisma of Anthony Steel, the actor playing the game warden character. He simply doesn't have any. Neither does he have any chemistry whatsoever with his onscreen wife, Mary. He also manages to have his acting pants pulled down, by Edric O'Connor, who plays Ushingo, the chief of the local Galana tribe. O'Connor is quite exceptional in the role and clearly was no amateur performer.

The dramatic content focusses on illegal ivory poaching and smuggling (the I suspect, real life footage of an elephant being hunted and killed for its tusks is jarring) which as mentioned earlier still plagues our world and especially the elephant populations of the planet. A sub-story deals with the Galana's tribal lands being affected by soil erosion, with the resulting effect of younger tribal members drifting off towards the city and both its attractions and associated social problems.

Harry Watt, a regular Ealing director, specialised in both raising socially aware issues in his films, whilst making said films overseas. I direct interested readers towards his 1959 offering made in Australia, The Siege of Pinchgut, which is definitely NOT your typical crooks versus cops siege movie.

In WOZ, Watt is less successful in laying down a coherent narrative and sustaining a pacy delivery supplemented by a good deal of suspense. Things do pick up in the third act, where I found the constant back projections and use of inserted documentary stock footage, rather entertaining, but probably not for the right reasons. It was also amusing watching Mary Payton thundering through the African plain lands punishing this ancient 4 wheel drive truck, come personnel carrier.

This is by no means a flawless film. But Watt and his script writers, obviously had a handle on some of the big issues affecting the African continent in the 50's. Come the second decade of the 21st century and folks, they still haven't been resolved.

A tribe in East Africa has moved from their old areas, which has dried up and is no longer suitable for farming, down to the lowlands near Mombasa. Some of the young men finding that killing elephants illegally and selling their ivory is a way to get ahead in rapidly changing East Africa. Anthony Steele, on official leave from his job working with the natives, tries to track down those who really profit from the trade, with the reluctant urging of his wife, Sheila Sim.

It's a late colonial era view of East Africa, amidst which is set one of those tracking-down-the-smugglers stories that was a fixture of British crime drama. However, this Ealing production has moved on a bit from TRADER HORN, and the natives are human, particularly Edric Connor as the chief, and so is the villain of the piece -- Martin Benson, playing a native lawyer, a graduate of the Sorbonne, who lectures Steele on England's industrial revolution and angrily congratulates him on his naive good will.

This being a movie set in Africa, the movie can shift at any moment from an indoor courtroom to documentary footage, showing the most dangerous animals in Africa -- hippopotami -- or the markets of Zanzibar, wart hogs and elephants at a watering hole, native fishermen using suckerfish to catch sea turtles, or a native fishing festival. The director is Harry Watt, whose filmography indicates he was happier filming documentaries than story films.

Still, it's a well-told if typical story, set in an exotic location, and if its attitudes are not those we espouse today, there are some bright moments that survive well.

At times it is difficult to make out if this film is supposed to be a dramatic narrative film or a glorified travelogue.Since this was the pre jet age,not many people could journey to Africa and see these sights for themselves.They could view them in black and white on their 12 inch TV screens but that was it.So the antics of the dung beetle seem to supplant the importance of moving the plot onwards.In the cinema the audience had to suffer in silence whereas we can now happily fast forward.the plot is about ivory poaching,apparently as bad then as it is now.Anthony Steel plays the game warden and seems to be carved out of ivory himself.Sylvia Simm seems to have a different costume for every scene.Michael Balcon's Ealing only had 2 years remaining,and watching lame efforts like this ,it is not very surprising.

You can understand why certain illegal ivory hunters do this job. They're poor and need to survive. Only problem is that the people paying them to murder the elephants are giving them a pittance and are making huge profits for themselves. It's amazing to think that Africa's elephant population from 26 million elephants in 1800 to fewer than one million today. Elephant tusks from Africa average about 2 metres in length and weigh over 20 kg.

The buyers of ivory express genuine concerns about cruelty towards animals, however, less than one-third of them believe that elephants are very endangered.