Although working well together, Balcon was not intending to revisit Mackendrick’s former Ealing successes with Sammy Going South. Indeed, the film has more in common with Ealing’s unashamed African adventure Where No Vultures Fly (the most popular British film of 1951 and that year’s Royal Film Performance) than it does other Mackendrick films. Midway through the film, we see a montage of various wild animals in and around Sammy’s barge as he sails down the White Nile.  The Kuleshov effect of matching Sammy against shots of wildebeest, elephants, crocodiles and hippos is a cliché of the genre found in the worst of the exploitation adventure films, yet finds a place here. Moreover, despite his benevolent personality, the film’s main adult character – played by its star, Edward G. Robinson – happens to be an illegal diamond smuggler, pillaging the land and making a fortune.  ‘This is the land that God forgot,’ he states, ‘and only Cocky remembered.’  Cocky is punished at the end of the film but not before instilling in Sammy a shared sense that they are both men of Africa.  Sammy’s journey across the soon-to-be former British colonies is of less relevance to the film’s story than their role as territories through which Sammy learns to become a man.  Orlando Martins – playing the only significant African part as Abu Lubaba, a Sudanese haji – endorses this view, telling Sammy that ‘man’s life is a journey.’

Mackendrick does explore the issue of Sammy’s guilt.  One of the bonding moments between Cocky and Sammy occurs when the boy reveals his trauma at causing an accident that led to the fatal wounding of a crooked Syrian peddler.  We see the scene earlier in the film and the Syrian is depicted as corrupt and a potential rapist.  The accident and Sammy’s later theft of the dead Syrian’s wallet, though not depicted as an implicit punishment of the man’s sins, nevertheless leaves the viewer with little sympathy for him.  Again it is the narrative of Sammy’s trauma which is the the scene’s focus.  Although metaphorically suggesting some kind of implicit British guilt at recklessly abandoning the African territories and their people, Sammy’s guilt is explained as a deferred reaction to the death of his parents and forms part of his evolution into a man.  Moreover, Sammy feels no such guilt for his later selfish thoughtlessness (almost forgetting to thank Abu) or malicious actions (abandoning and imparing the survival of tourist guide, Spyros Dracondopolous, lost in the wildest African bush and suffering severe dysentery). 

The relationship between Cocky and Sammy is at the heart of Sammy Going South, but the figures that populate the rest of the film are mere ciphers in Sammy’s episodic development.  As Philip Kemp points out, Mackendrick’s depiction of Sammy’s naïvely cruel moments carry with them an ‘unpalatable hint of racial condescension’ (Kemp p.183) 

Dylan Cave