User reviews

Dirk Bogarde, poorly regarded brother of a Kenyan farmer, comes to Kenya to find his brother killed by the savage Mau Mau group led by the mysterious SIMBA. Will he find true love, a sense of responsibility, and a proper regard with the indigenous people who are revolting against colonial rule?

Though this a painfully sincere movie illustrating the hardships of being a white farmer in a countryside full of people who do not want white farmers, its hard not to be somewhat appalled by a movie that poses the question -- do the native Kenyans who were part of the Mau Mau deserve to be regarded as men, or simply as savages. While, fortunately, it does feel like the movie makers are making the case for thinking of the Kenyans as humans, it's a bit of a close issue, as the lead farmer is allowed to rant about savages, and the police commissioner trying desperately to keep order, seems to have ill-concealed contempt for the natives revolting against his authority.

The acting is all good, and the direction keeps this particular plot moving. The opening sequence is shocking. The final sequence really is quite tense, and the way the filmmakers choose to end this film makes some rather unpleasant and unpalatable points quite well.

The problem is this. Do you really want to see a movie made from the point of view of the earnest but colonialist occupiers? Are you willing to tolerate something that looks like the film the French in Battle of Algiers would have made, had they access to a camera and clipped British accents? If you aren't, don't watch. You really will get angry.

But, if you want to see viewpoint of the English establishment just before colonialism was ended, this might be as good a place as any to find it.

This movie may be accused of racism.Perhaps so.But you could also blame "stagecoach" and a lot of westerns before "broken arrow" as well :the Indians were the villains,just as the natives are here.Let's be serious!It was half a century ago and at the time the writers had not the hindsight we have today.The precedent user saw the movie through the eyes of the 2004 audience obviously the politically correct one.Judging by the rating,there are users who disagree and I'm one of them.

First of all,"Simba" is not poorly executed,it has a good screenplay,fine actors (Bogarde and Virginia McKenna),beautiful landscapes...That the Africans should be shown as primitive,cruel and mindless does not prevent some of them from becoming educated and wise:"I studied for six years ,the black doctor says,to save lives ,not to destroy them".Two years later in "something of value" ,Richard Brooks showed a native afraid of thunder!"Simba" is the British forerunner of Richard Brook's work.In "Simba" anyway ,the White are not necessarily the heroes.See how Bogarde refuses to shake hands with the doctor.And the last picture of the movie is a black child's face ,a curious choice for a would be racist flick.

Despite the noble attempts at even-handedness in handling racial conflicts in 1950s Kenya (Earl Cameron is a commanding presence as a pacifist, educated doctor), "Simba" still has a racist and imperialist point-of-view: most of the black characters indeed are, or are quick to become, "howling savages". If you can overlook that, it's a well-made piece of work, vividly photographed in Eastmancolor and with some tense suspense sequences. **1/2 ouf 4.

There are others on this site who can more aptly discuss the politics present in this film, so I won't do it.

"Simba" stars Dirk Bogarde, Virginia McKenna, and Donald Sinden. It is the story of an Englisman, Alan Howard (Bogarde) who visits his brother in Africa and learns that he has been murdered by the Mau Mau. He decides to stay and work his brother's farm and renew his relationship with Mary (McKenna), an old love who lives in Africa with her British parents. As the fighting goes on, prejudices on both sides are voiced, and Mary and Alan find themselves on opposite sides.

Though the acting is good, the movie is a mess for some technical reasons, not to mention the skewed viewpoint of the film. The producer and director were somehow under the impression that Jack Hawkins was going to star in the movie. Consequently, they filmed in Kenya using a double for Hawkins, who was six inches taller than Dirk Bogarde. While in Kenya, they used a tall blond man as a double for the police inspector, but when they returned to England, they couldn't match him up with anyone. When Donald Sinden walked into Pinewood Studios, he had his hair streaked for another film, and the producer asked him if he would dye his hair. Thus, he got the role.

The landscapes are beautiful, but one is aware that the actors weren't in Africa, and when they're on the screen, the landscapes are projections.

Simba is an interesting film, and as a fan of Dirk Bogarde, I'll watch him in anything, but this isn't a great movie.

Set in Kenya in the 1950's, this film attempts to portray the conflict between black and white in an even-handed way. But it can't help making the whites the victims and the blacks the villains. One token good black man (a doctor) is hardly sufficient to make up for the superstitious and blood-thirsty mobs that ransack the country killing viciously and without mercy. This film is even more reprehensible given the dreadful events now occurring in Zimbabwe where white farmers are being murdered by black squatters. I'm sure a black African audience would find this film further motivation to hate the arrogant whites. How can we sympathise with a man who insists that the blacks are "children mentally" and with our hero and heroine who insist on calling their native workers "boy"? I've no doubt that the film-makers were sincere in trying to promote a message of peace - but this peace is portrayed as achievable only on the white man's terms.

To make things worse the film is poorly made, with clumsy editing from stand-ins for the stars wandering around African locations to close-ups of the real stars with badly rear-projected locations. This constant shuffling becomes so silly that it destroys any chance the film had at credibility. By 1955 we really expect the cast to be on location. This is one dinosaur of a film that should be laid to rest. I'm sure the great Dirk Bogarde was bitterly ashamed of it in later life.

This movie has just been issued on an R4 PAL disc available through Australian retailers so it's nice to see a pristine copy of it at last rather than a very well worn Beta tape. It has come in for some unfair criticism as a racist tract which it isn't at all. The good or bad old Colonial days existed, like it or not, and its just anachronistic to apply todays values to life some 50 years ago.The film makes the Mau Mau out to be the villains, the Hamas of their day,and so thought the settlers. Only the most prescient of them saw independence ahead; this is set several years before McMillan's Winds of Change speech. Rank stalwarts Borgade and McKenna give good performances as lovers and besieged farmers and Donald Sinden looks great as the local police chief. View it for what it is. We can't erase history, good or bad, like we can airbrush cigarettes from old photos.

"Howard" (Dirk Bogarde) arrives in colonial East Africa just as the Mau-Mau rebellion is gathering pace. His farm is adjacent to that of the "Crawford" family - Basil Sydney, Marie Ney and daughter "Mary" (Virginia McKenna). Fairly swiftly, their community starts to more fully appreciate the increasing dangers they face. As the native population become more audacious with their activities many want to flee, many want to try harder to work and share with their dispossessed African neighbours whilst others want to use the full force of "Insp. Drummond" (Donald Sinden) and his thinly spread police force. Stuck squarely in the middle of this scenario is the doctor "Karanja" (Earl Cameron). A man who has studied hard for six years and who wants, above all, to avoid murderous conflict. When a man is critically injured by the insurgents, "Karanja" is suspected of expediting his death before he can talk and with trust in short supply, this pot really begins to boil. It's a story that illustrates the best and worst of British administration and attitudes contrasted with a determination amongst the local people to reclaim their homeland - brutally and ruthlessly if needs be, and though the political detail is a little scant, it's not a bad attempt at showing the writing on the wall for empire. Save for quite a poignant effort from Cameron, none of the other acting here is up to much, nor is the writing, but the external cinematography (and the audio) are impressive and the story - though copping out slightly at the end - works quite well. Such films never date well, the language and superiority complex of the colonists can be quite hard to stomach nowadays, but it's still worth a watch.

Some subject matter is offensive in itself when it is cinematically constructed as popular entertainment, and this effort at ' dealing ' with the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya is one of them. It is sensationalist right from the start with an injured man being hacked to pieces, and to avoid an adults only certificate you do not see in closeup the death throes, but imagination is strong and in a way you have seen it. You know it is happening and this repetitive hacking of live bodies happens three times in the films running time. Of course it is the frightening Mau Mau are doing it either to the white population or to others who do not want to join them. Briefly the story is of a young man ( Dirk Bogarde ) who comes to Kenya to join his brother on running a farm, but the brother has been killed and a woman friend played extremely well by Virginia McKenna meets and falls in love with him. They have opposite opinions about the Mau Mau and love has to overcome this. Bogarde cannot ' do ' romance well as an actor, and he comes over as a rather nasty, character cold in his relation to others and distinctly racist. There is a lot of racist dialogue in the film, and one of them is ' 60 years ago they had hardly come down from the trees. ' That of course is the population in Kenya before the whites arrived. This to me is sensationalist dialogue, and very provocative in the mid-1950's. But to get away from the basic subject matter it is a brutal, cruel film and it had popular actors of the time, including Donald Sinden to get the popcorn crowd in. To sum up, relatively recent history needs clear vision, and I think this film is foggy in its approach and possibly harmful for an impressionable child to see with an adult. Maybe it had cuts to get it an ' A ' instead of an ' X ' certificate but then the English have always been easy going with violence. To verify that watch ' Camp on Blood Island ' and how it approached the Japanese. Again popcorn fodder for an audience willing to believe anything it sees as long as it is entertainment. It too was made in the mid-1950's , a period in my opinion of many prejudices that can damage a viewer for life.

For the historical-minded, this is by far the best film about the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. The mood of the country at the time is very well reflected here. The attitude of the colonials and the Africans are both very accurately portrayed, as is the way in which Mau Mau divided both communities, both African and British. While the un-PC nature of the time may bother some, it is quite accurate. While the style of filming may bother some, if you watch it for the acting and the story you'll enjoy it. Wonderful movie about Kenya. As someone who has spent many of the best years of my life in Kenya, this movie will always be special to me, my father lived in Kenya from 1947-1963, throughout the height of Mau Mau, and he praises the way in which the film really captures the moment as well.

I don't intend to review the film in its entirety, but rather discuss its treatment of race relations. There is little doubt that it was transgressive by the standards of its time, and, also, it was incredibly raw and often offensive in terms of rank racism, but it was also refreshingly honest and unvarnished. We saw the ugliness for what it was on all sides. We saw the complication. We saw how truly decent people could hold a variety of view and then change them for the better. Most importantly,we saw humanity. I don't think we can achieve that by sanitizing and political correctness. I am grateful that this film is available for viewing and consideration. Just the notion of an accomplished black doctor standing up to a white man in such an astonishing way circa 1955 was amazing. We didn't see anything like it until Sydney Poitier uttered his famous line, "They call me Mr. Tibbs."

Some of the reviews of this movie are too absorbed with the alleged racial content. Although racism was prevalent in the white community, a better approach would be to recognize the white settlers' concern for their safety from murder and home invasion. Some people don't know much about the history of the period, and are too preoccupied with being politically correct by today's standards. The Mau Mau rebellion was an early example of terrorism through brutality and atrocity. Many Kenyans lived in fear of a Mau Mau raid and more than 2,000 were killed by Mau Mau. The blood oaths and secret society of the Mau Mau made the terror all the more extreme. Although few of those murdered were white, many settlers were extremely scared. They were particularly scared at night, and of being betrayed by their household employees. Simba accurately depicts the fear and tension of the period. There are fine performances and the movie is absorbing and exciting.

One of my biggest complaints about American cinema films concerning Africa is that they are complete pulp fiction and give us no real understanding of the continent. How could it since we have no real ties, even colonial ones with Africa. Simba however which is British made and shot on actual location in Kenya Colony which it was at the time this film was made is a good insight to the problems of an Empire in its last gasp and they knew it.

Kenya took longer than most of sub-Saharan Africa to be free because of the Mau Mau rebellion. But free it became within a decade of Simba reaching the screen. Dirk Bogarde stars as a young man come to Africa to work with his brother on the family farm in Kenya. But on his arrival he discovers that the brother has been murdered by the Mau Maus.

This does engender some racial attitudes in Bogarde, understandable to say the least. Seeing the better angels of Africa's nature is Virginia McKenna the daughter of neighboring farmers Basil Sydney and Marie Ney. Dealing with it from a military point of view is Donald Sinden in charge of the local constabulary which also is staffed with native troops.

These players and the rest of Simba's film crew took their lives in their hands going there to make this film. Another American film on Africa, Safari with Victor Mature and Janet Leigh, also dealt peripherally with the Mau Mau movement and was shot there a year later. This is the better product by far.

Mention must also go to Earl Cameron playing the European educated black doctor who is caught between the white colonials and his own natives and this violent outbreak which is harming all. Cameron delivers a fine performance, his is the voice of emerging Africa and Kenya in particular.

Don't miss this one if it's broadcast.

Many people in their reviews have called this movie/story racist. Obviously these people do not know their history. This period in Africa actually happened as many other events in other countries did at the same time or earlier periods.

I even just read today that at the Alamo in San Antonio they are trying to remove the names of certain people who were killed there because they kept slaves. History cannot be changed only in the future Dan we all try to make the a better world.

SIMBA is a remarkable story with top British actors of the 50s and wonderful visuals. The violence is portrayed as it really happened. I lived through this period. Even one of the Producers was born in South Africa and lived through the Mau Mau wars.

It pinpoints all the problems of colonialism, how it has to turn the natives against the intruding masters, while they have their defense as well - they do bring help and order to the country with education and cultivation, and if the natives react with violence they earn being called stupid.

The most fascinating scenes are always with the natives, though, especially every scene with doctor Karanja (Earl Cameron) who is the backbone of humanity in the film, placed in a very sensitive position as working with the whites to help his own but disowned by his own father. The dramatic finale caps the solemn drama, and as in all real stories, that's where the real story begins, the last shot being of the one innocent person and foremost victim of the whole conflict.

The initial scene sets the theme and the tension, which lasts throughout and is never really resolved, the conflict going on still today, as white farmers of South Africa and Zimbabwe are being murdered still today. Both Dirk Bogarde and Donald Sinden make rather poor figures of stolidity, and you never really see them come to some deeper senses. Virginia McKenna as always brightens up the arduous drama with her beauty and crowns the film with a sustained romance - at least that will continue after the film. I can't raise any objections against this film, which honestly gives such a full picture of the Mau-Mau situation as was possible and calls for important attention to the great social problems of Africa, which mainly consist of inherent and almost incurable superstition.

Useless to say that the British film industry doesn't make any films of this kind any more, and this since the mid sixties and the likes of KARTHOUM. Since the end of the British colonial empire; now the UK film industry focuses on social - comedies, crime, dramas - movies, a domain where they are excellent. This gritty and poignant adventure yarn is also excellent and I can't prevent myself to compare it with SOMETHING OF VALUE, SAFARI, BEYOND MOMBASA.... It is one of the best in this genre and also my favourite from director Brian Desmond Hurst, among those I saw from him. Dirk Bogarde as terrific as usual, convincing, especially with his co star Virginia McKenna.