Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

HotToastyRag For some unknown reason, Susan Hayward falls in love with Tyrone Power, but he's in love with South Africa. He has the beautiful, incredible Susan Hayward in his arms and he wants to leave for South Africa? In any case, he feels his calling, and he plans to travel there from Ireland. She declares her love and says she'll marry him and go with him. The next day, he leaves without her. How mean and hurtful! How are we supposed to root for him? Years later, Susan is seen sailing into South Africa, married and with a child. This was her great plan: to marry someone else, bear his child, and then reunite with Tyrone to prove how much she's loved him all these years? How are we supposed to root for her? Neither of the leads are nice people, and their motivations are really tough to get behind. It's clear someone wanted this movie to be a lush, love triangle epic, but the end result hardly succeeded. Try Elephant Walk if you want a similar setting with better characters.

JohnHowardReid I'm sorely tempted to side with two of the previous reviewers and give this movie a nil rating, but it's not really all that bad! Copyright 1955 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 11 March 1955. U.S. release: 3 March 1955. U.K. release: July 1955. Australian release: 4 August 1955. 111 minutes. Censored to 109 minutes in the U.K.SYNOPSIS: Katie O'Neill (Hayward) meets Paul Van Riebeck (Power), a South African Boer bigwig, when he comes to Ireland to buy horses. They fall for each other, but Paul does not want to get married until he establishes a Boer state in South Africa. COMMENT: Impossibly trite. For once it's easy to choose the movie's worst feature. The banal script wins hands down over the hammy and amateurish acting and the consistently lackluster direction. The plot is, to say it as kindly as possible, such utterly ridiculous tosh, even the most unsophisticated audience would laugh it off the screen. It's also racist and badly dated. If were not so laughably unbelievable, it would have been blandly offensive. What passes for characterization are actually the most superficial and poorly motivated of cardboard figures. Even worse is the dialogue which for sheer banality and lack of drama would be difficult to match.Admittedly, the story, poorly motivated though it is and proceeding in a series of fits and starts, does lay on a bit of action and it is set against some awesome and fascinating backgrounds. But the actors were handed an impossible task to bring warmth and sympathy to such posturing, paste-board characters. Susan turns on all the synthetic mannerisms at her command; Egan grimaces and rants; Power just says his lines. The support cast players have little impact. King's direction is dull and even some of the action scenes are limply staged. The film runs on and on, seemingly without end. Despite some obvious back projection, the locations rather than the actors or the story, make the most impression.

romarub I was amazed that Katie (Susan Hayward) could be such a bitch - so self-centered, so arrogant, so unappreciative, and so willfully embroiling Paul (Tyrone Power) and Kurt (Richard Egan) in a contest over her affections - and not be justifiably rewarded, even a little, by film's end. She slaps Paul in the face, teases and flirts, then rejects, then accepts Kurt, all while being in love (?) with Paul. I found it most incredible that Paul could lower himself to the point of actually pursuing (let alone ending up with) her after she tells him that she'd married her husband and had a child with him, watched him die (without a twinge of emotion) defending her and the wagon train, and came to South Africa in the first place just so she could be near him, Paul! This woman is unscrupulous to the nth degree, and that she could avoid any degree of lasting hellfire, and could repeatedly twist the two male love interests (Paul and Kurt) around her little finger throughout the film, was wholly unsatisfying. Kurt was somewhat hotheaded, and I'd have expected him to come to the end he does. But Paul seemed more rational, and should have disassociated himself from this woman as soon as he got that slap - but didn't. Life may be unjust, but in the movies we expect to see villainy uncovered and subject to its own reward. Not only was Katie not so repaid, but the male leads looked stupid in the process for not seeing who and what she really was. Thumbs down, all around!

rfkeser Everyone works hard to make this grand-scaled hokum as enjoyable as possible. As a redheaded Irish spitfire, Susan Hayward finally gets her chance to play Scarlett O'Hara, but packs all her chiffons and crinolines [with matching shoes and stockings] in a covered wagon and sets off to cross the veldt with wise Agnes Moorehead and a cast of thousands [well, hundreds]. She's chasing Tyrone Power across South Africa, although he's something of a stiff, but she also loves hearty Richard Egan. The script stuffs in everything from a fancy dress ball to an emergency amputation. Henry King directs it all with some intensity, especially a harrowing and spectacular Zulu attack, and uses the wide screen well to capture the spaciousness of the land. Should be seen on the big screen at least in letterbox].