SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

clanciai The interesting part of this film is the friendship between Stanley and Livingstone as transmitted by Spencer Tracy and Cedric Hardwicke. It's the ideal kind of role for Spencer Tracy, and he would continue developing characters in that direction still for many years to come up to the judge in "Judgement at Nuremberg" 1961. Cedríc Hardwicke makes the most credible possible Dr. Livingstone as both a missionary and a doctor, a character and mission later carried on by Albert Schweitzer. The great encounter is framed by a very epic adventure of Africa exploration, and this could be Henry King's best film - he certainly wouldn't always be that good. Almost the whole film is of a journey, starting carefully in Zanzibar presenting already from the beginning the major complications of infection - one presumes it is malaria - and how it must affect any European for life, like as if Africa in itself was an unavoidable mortal illness for any daring visitor. Spencer Tracy really knocks it off when he has to defend his exploits to the Royal Geographical Society of London headed by Charles Coburn as Stanley's leading newspaper competitor, a London journal completely dominating the field and feeling the threat of New York Herald. It's a great adventure film above all but very much enhanced and lifted to higher levels by the acting of Spencer Tracy and Cedric Hardwicke.

Beam Me Up As was common at this time in Hollywood, the facts of the Stanley-Livingstone saga were highly fictionalized and romanticized in this film. This was an era in movie-making when close attention was not always given to historical accuracy.The ending of the movie, with "Onward Christian Soldiers" playing in the background, turned the movie into a salute to the "spreading of Christianity to heathen lands," one of the common arguments used in the 19th century to justify European imperialism. It's another example of Hollywood portraying Christianity as the "true religion" superior to all other beliefs. On top of that, the ending clearly overlooks the fact that while Stanley returned to Africa after Livingstone's death, it was for purposes of exploration and empire building, not to follow in Livingstone's footsteps as a missionary.

bkoganbing If any of you have read some of my reviews of other films, you'll note that I've said that Jim Bowie of all the colorful frontier characters in American history gets the biggest whitewash in films. The man was a notorious scoundrel and half of this film is devoted to another scoundrel.Henry M. Stanley was just such a scoundrel. The film does not go at all into his later life as a paid shill of King Leopold of Belgium and his brutally administered regime in the Belgian Congo. Nor does it mention when he came to America, he enlisted and deserted from both sides of the Civil War.Stanley found his calling as a reporter for the New York Herald where on the strength of his reporting on the American Indian wars, editor James Gordon Bennett decided he was the guy to send to Africa and scoop the English papers in a search for famed missionary Dr. David Livingstone.Whatever else he was, Stanley was a brave man and his explorations into Africa added considerable knowledge for the Caucasian world about that continent.As for Livingstone, by all indications he was a Christian who did walk the walk in his beliefs in life and probably would have been aghast at Stanley's later activities with the Belgian Congo.Spencer Tracy plays Stanley as if he was doing one of his roughneck characters who finds the piety of a Father Flanagan in the African jungle. Cedric Hardwicke is a very proper and pious David Livingstone. Hardwicke's portrayal is the truth and Tracy does put his characterization of Stanley across, false though it is in real life.This was Spencer Tracy's only film away from MGM for the time he was under contract to them. It was for his former studio 20th Century Fox and he certainly never got as big a budget on his previous films with them except possibly Dante's Inferno.Though the film takes incredible liberties with the facts, fans of Spencer Tracy might like this story of a scoundrel in search of a saint in the jungle.

Longjohnbob I loved this movie as a young boy. It got me interested in history, especially the story of Europe's efforts to discover the geographic source of the mighty Nile River. Spencer Tracey as Stanley and Cedric Hardwicke as Livingstone are superb. Spencer Tracy didn't think much of the quote "Dr Livingstone I presume" and it took many takes for him to get it right. Supposedly he kept laughing when saying the line. Ironically that line helps make the film so memorable. If you enjoyed MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON you will enjoy this old black and white film classic as well.Not everything in it is historically accurate. In the film Stanley vows to return to Africa to follow in Livingstone's footsteps, but instead becomes a brutal exploiter of Africa for the King of Belgium.