Guns at Batasi **** (1964, Richard Attenborough, Flora Robson, Jack Hawkins, John Leyton, Cecil Parker, Mia Farrow) – Classic Movie Review 8135

Director John Guillermin’s fascinating 1964 African-set adventure movie Guns at Batasi, with a theme about the passing of British colonialism, is greatly invigorated by stiff-lipped performances by Richard Attenborough, Flora Robson, Jack Hawkins and Cecil Parker, plus love interest from Mia Farrow (in her first film, aged 19) from her pre-Woody Allen days when she was far less interesting. However, she was voted the 1965 Golden Globe Most Promising Newcomer – Female.

The film is helped enormously by Attenborough’s enthusiastic performance – one of his best – as the strict disciplinarian Regimental Sergeant Major Lauderdale, whose British garrison headquarters in Africa is threatened by rebels, who put it under siege after a coup when they refuse to give up a prisoner. Attenborough recalled it as ‘One of the most bizarre parts I’ve ever played’. He won the 1965 BAFTA Film Award for Best British Actor.

The screenplay of Guns at Batasi is written by Robert Holles from his novel The Siege of Battersea. Somehow ‘Guns at Battersea’ doesn’t sound so exciting. It is dazzlingly filmed by Slocombe in documentary-style black and white in winter on the Pinewood Studios back lot in Buckinghamshire, England, made to resemble an over-heated Africa.

Also in the cast are Percy Herbert, Errol John, Earl Cameron, Graham Stark, David Lodge, Bernard Horsfall, John Meillon, Patrick Holt, Horace James and Alan Browning.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 8135

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