Log in to the forum to add your own ratings and reviewsReviewed by: David
Rated: 10 out of 10
Date of review: 2009-02-07 20:03:09
Review: SAMMY GOING SOUTH (1963).
a review of the film by David.

Unfortunately for American audiences, they never got to see the complete film of Sammy Going South. The original running time of the release print was 130 minutes. But I believe this was cut to 84 minutes for US release, as well as the title being changed to A Boy Ten Feet Tall and US release held back for two years until 1965. The extensive cuts in the US version meant that the original music score by Tristram Cary had to be removed and replaced with another score by Les Baxter. The longest print available at the moment is the 119 minute print that’s been run a few times in the UK on Channel 4 television (this equates to 114 minutes at a PAL television running speed of 25 frames per second). Which means there’s still around eleven minutes missing somewhere. Still, it’s a vast improvement on what the American audiences would have seen.

The actual history of the making of the film is a very troubled one. Executive Producer Michael Balcon saw the story as a Disney-fied and heartwarming tale of a ten years old innocent boy’s triumph over adversity, set against the fantastic CinemaScope and Eastman Colour scenery of the African continent. However, the film’s director, Alexander Mackendrick, had an entirely different understanding of the story and his understanding of it was altogether darker: He saw it as “the inward odyssey of a deeply disturbed child, who destroys everybody he comes up against”.

Mackendrick, to his credit (and after all, Balcon was paying his wages), tried his best to compromise with these two contrasting interpretations and this is probably the reason why Sammy Going South turned out not to be quite the classic film it should have been and the complete cutting of three scenes vital to the narrative and the heavy cutting of a fourth scene, undermined the film considerably.

The first scene to be entirely cut from the film showed the reason why, after the British air raid on Suez that killed Sammy’s parents, his Egyptian friend Mahmoud suddenly turns on Sammy. Mahmoud’s father worked at the apartment block where Sammy’s parents lived and he, also, was killed in the bombing. Distraught with grief, Mahmoud takes his anger out on Sammy, who, to Mahmoud, represents the British who killed his father.

The second scene to be cut showed Sammy, after being attacked and chased by Mahmoud, taking shelter in the office where his father worked, which is now deserted and wrecked, with the words BRITISH GO HOME scrawled on the walls and dirt smeared over the Queen’s portrait. This scene would have established that Sammy felt himself to be totally abandoned by his own people.

The third scene to be entirely cut from the film was a very disturbing one, but crucial to the narrative. In it, Sammy, wandering aimlessly along a beach near Suez, finds the beach alive with crabs. Sammy devises a game. He is the bomber and the crabs are people and, in an attitude of “why should you still be alive when my mummy and daddy are dead?”, he bombed the crabs with stones, littering the beach with cracked shells oozing yellow body substance amongst aimlessly twitching legs and claws. He made roaring sounds representing the RAF bombers and ran with arms stretched out in a long shadow over the carnage of this small “battlefield.” Then, with hatred in his eyes and having cornered a crab against a rock like a cat playing with a mouse, Sammy stands over it and smashes it violently with a stone, shouting: “I am God! That’s what God did to my mummy and daddy!”…and falls to his knees with his hands over his face and sobs bitterly. MacKendrick saw this as the key scene in the film, that showed just what a little killer-monster Sammy had become. “You can gather what I felt when that scene went”, said MacKendrick later.

The fourth scene to be cut was ordered by the British Board of Film Censors to be either cut entirely, or heavily toned down. The producers were after a “U” certificate for the film and so had to comply. It involved the Syrian peddler who comes across Sammy laying on a sand dune in the middle of the Egyptian desert. The Syrian was sexually attracted to Sammy and was shown lusting after him and trying to have his way with him. After all, alone in the middle of the desert with a ten year old orphaned English boy…who would ever know what he did with him…or even care? However, two small parts of the supposedly cut scenes did make it to the final release print. In one, the Syrian is kneeling before the standing Sammy and is quite plainly and excitedly oggling the front of Sammy’s khaki bush shorts, his desire and imagination running wild, before grabbing hold of Sammy’s right wrist and trying to drag the boy down onto the sand with him, while Sammy tries to wriggle free from his grasp. The impression is given that Sammy knows what the Syrian wants them to do together, but that he isn’t game for it. Later on, the Syrian, gazing longingly at Sammy, holds the end of a headdress across the lower half of Sammy’s face and says something to him softly in Arabic, at which point Sammy shouts at him and runs off. This scene would have made little sense to the viewer unless they could have seen the scenes that preceded it and which, of course, were cut from the film. To even have filmed such scenes involving a man and a ten years old boy, let alone hope to have them passed by the censor as far back as 1962 – 1963, was brave and daring in the extreme. Certainly, such scenes wouldn’t be passed by the censor even today.

Later still, after the Syrian has died following an explosion when Sammy put the wrong kind of stones on the camp fire, Sammy callously steals the Syrian’s wallet full of money from his corpse and continues his journey south on one of the Syrian’s donkeys. Disney-fied, this film definitely isn’t! But such scenes plainly show the character of Sammy and the effect on the little boy that the loss of his home and his parents had had on him that MacKendrick was trying to put across.

However, even with all this cutting of the film, Fergus McClelland’s excellent performance still comes through. He was an eleven years old pupil at Holland Park Comprehensive School in London in early 1962 when he was chosen, from hundreds of other boys, to play Sammy.

Mackendrick thought that Fergus was perfect for the role. “He was a lean, hard, little boy. Tough as old nails…a really strong character”, said Mackendrick. “He had the hunted look of an abused child, which in some ways he was. He came from a disturbed home; his parents were getting divorced and there were problems. So he was the perfect casting. But when he went out to Africa, he started having the time of his life. The unit adored him and, to my dismay, started to feed him…he put on weight and there was no way I could stop it. So, instead of this hunted and abused child, who’s supposed to be starving and neurotic, you had a sturdy, stocky, well fed little character. A good actor, but the physique betrayed itself.”

Throughout his four thousand mile journey from Port Said to Durban, Sammy meets many different types of people…some who want to molest him, or use him, or exploit him, so that by the time he meets someone like the diamond smuggler Cocky Wainwright, wonderfully played by Edward G. Robinson, who only wants to help him, Sammy is still withdrawn and untrusting. But he and Cocky get on wonderfully together and a very touching moment in the film occurs when Sammy, now finally trusting Cocky, asks him if he can stay with him forever and Cocky replies that he can. Cocky and his band have now become his new family and Cocky’s home Sammy’s new home and, for the first time since Port Said, he is happy. Later on, when the police find Cocky’s camp and pull it down as Cocky and his band escape into the bush, Sammy returns to sleep in the ruins and, crying, realises that he has lost his home and his family for the second time and, after all he has been through, he is right back where he started.

It was not an easy film to make by any means. There were casualties among the cast and crew, including two crew members being bitten by poisonous snakes and Edward G. Robinson suffering a near fatal heart attack. However, it seems that just like his character Sammy, Fergus McClelland came through it all without a scratch. Beginner’s Luck, perhaps.

I would love to see this film restored to its original glory on a widescreen DVD, with all its cut scenes reinstated. Whether that will ever happen, though, I have no idea.

Review by David.

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