Wed 5 Oct 2011
Movie Review: CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM (1957).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[7] Comments
CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM. J. Arthur Rank, UK, 1957. Dirk Bogarde, Stanley Baker, Michael Craig, Barbara Murray, James Robertson Justice, Sid James. Based on the novel by Hammond Innes. Director: Ralph Thomas.
I watched this movie about a week ago, without planning to write up any comments about it. Just too ordinary, I thought. But thinking about it again this afternoon, it occurred to me that calling a film ordinary is a review, of sorts. All I have to do is expand upon it, and so here I am.
Not knowing enough about British film-making to say for sure, I don’t believe they ever went in for producing westerns. (Western novels are another matter. There are more westerns published in the UK today than there are in the US.) Campbell’s Kingdom is, I think, an exception. It takes place in Canada, though, somewhere in the western Rockies, so maybe it’s an almost-but-not-quite sort of exception.
Either way, the star of the film, Dirk Bogarde is no Alan Ladd (the closest American equivalent I have come up with) but as Bruce Campbell, the sickly heir who’s comes from Britain to claim his property high up in the mountains, he’s entirely believable. His grandfather died convinced there was oil on the land, and despite plans by the locals to build a dam and flood the property in the process, Bogarde refuses to sell and knuckles down to build a well to prove his grandfather was right.
Of course there also is crooked business at work, with the number one villain being Stanley Baker, the foreman of the dam building project, so while the plot may be predictable, the going is not easy.
Bogarde does find a few allies, chief of whom is a girl (Barbara Murray), but with only a few months to live (his doctor’s assessment), romance seems to be all but out of the question.
The color photography is wonderful, and some the hazards of working in the isolated wilderness are shown to great effect (the outdoors scenes were filmed in the Italian Alps). Back in 1957, some of the closing scenes must have been spectacular to see on the screen. But there’s no “oomph†in the plotting to make me want to tell you that you have to go out and buy the just released DVD of this movie.
Obviously I remember enough of the film to tell you as much as I have here about the film, but my initial assessment remains the same. Ordinary, just ordinary.
October 5th, 2011 at 9:15 am
Jamie Sturgeon has pointed out to me the existence of a blog devoted to British westerns:
http://stiglegger.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/british-western-by-marcus-stiglegger/
He adds that it mentions another Dirk Bogarde film The Singer Not the Song, but also Shalako and others. Jamie also remembers seeing on TV The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958) a while ago, albeit a western comedy, “mainly because Jayne Mansfield and one of my favourite actors, Kenneth More, starred in it.”
October 5th, 2011 at 10:38 am
Director Ralph Thomas is best known for the DOCTOR series of comedies, also with leading man Dirk Bogarde.
My reaction to the first, DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, is similar to Steve’s review of CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM: It’s pleasant , mild, likable but not really good. But it had ravishing color photography of London in the 1950’s. Like CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM, the cinematography was by Ernest Steward.
George Goodchild was a British mystery writer, who published many story collections about policeman Inspector McLean, ranging from McLean of Scotland Yard (1929) to McLean Knows the Answers (1967). Goodchild is perhaps a British equivalent of US pulp magazine writers: a man who turned out a huge amount of material, often in short story form.
He also wrote about Trooper O’Neill of the North-West Mounted Police. Canada seems to have been a big interest of British writers.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
I’m surprised that no-one has mentioned Hammond Innes, who wrote the original novel. He was one of the big thriller writers when I was growing up in the 70s. He carried on writing right up until his death in 1998, and was awarded a Bouchercon lifetime achievement award in 1993. Four of his books were turned into movies, most famous of them probably being WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE. I must admit that I’ve never read any of his stuff (must try harder to get the ‘to read’ pile down to a reasonable size).
I’m not certain why, but Dirk Bogarde has always given me the creeps. There’s just something about his screen persona that I don’t like, although I’d be very hard pressed to tell you why.
October 5th, 2011 at 12:42 pm
The reason why I didn’t say anything about Hammond Innes is that I’ve never read anything by him. That he was a big thriller writer in the 70s, I know, just as you say, and his books were written perfectly designed be filmed. I don’t think the criminous element was very strong in his work. Perhaps it’s a mistaken impression, but it’s the only explanation I have as why I’ve never read him.
If you’ve ever seen the movie THE SERVANT, which is the first time I saw Dirk Bogarde on the big screen, you may better know why you feel about him the way you do. (Or even if you haven’t. He was perfect in the role, which tells you something about his on screen persona.)
The title of Bosley Crowther’s review in the NEW YORK TIMES is “Down the Path of Degradation: Dirk Bogarde Appears as ‘The Servant’.”
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A02E3D81230E033A25754C1A9659C946591D6CF
He was a much more sympathetic character in CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM, but in spite of the comparison I made, he wasn’t Alan Ladd at all, nor would have Alan Ladd been right for the role.
October 6th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Say this about Dirk Bogarde, he was willing to play a homosexual (VICTIM) at a time that few name actors would take on such a role.
October 6th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Oh, there’s no denying that Bogarde was very brave in playing the role that he did in VICTIM. Nevertheless, I have to say that I’ve always found him slightly unnerving. RANK tried to push him as a teen heart-throb, making him the sensible lead in the DOCTOR films or the hero in various war flicks, but the movies of his that people remember tend to be the ones that he made after leaving RANK (DEATH IN VENICE, THE NIGHT PORTER). The thing is, I remember seeing him in some of the RANK stuff when I was a kid, and even then I didn’t really like him, even though I admired his acting. Even in his most innocuous roles there is the suggestion of deeper, darker undercurrents.
October 11th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Hammond Innes in fact started publishing fiction in 1937; his last novel came out in 1996, so he had an unusually long career. His work was the subject of a revival by Avon Books in the ’70s, first with a numbered series of older titles with dandy new covers and later with more recent books. His early novels are distinguished only by unusual locales, the stories themselves being fairly amateurish; his later work varied from very competent to extremely effective (e.g., THE SURVIVORS, aka THE WHITE SOUTH) while retaining his trademark exoticism (he might have taken to heart Merian C. Cooper’s precept of “Keep it Distant, Difficult and Dangerous.” CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM is set in the Canadian Rockies; THE SURVIVORS, aboard Antarctic whaling ships; THE ANGRY MOUNTAIN, postwar Italy and Vesuvius; and so on. Not the most exciting or intense of adventure writers, but a good storyteller and one who’d been everywhere, seen everything, and knew how to write about it.