NR | 1 h 41 min | Drama, Biopic | 1939
“Today we saw our first human beings in over three months.” That line from director Henry King’s heavily dramatized film adaptation of a true story hints at the scale of adventure on hand.
Against incredible odds, Stanley finds Livingstone, then turns kindred spirit, accompanying him on expeditions. Initially cynical about searching for a man whom no one’s “ever heard about,” Stanley soon wants to be the reporter telling Livingstone’s story. He’s convinced that the likes of Livingstone, who heal the spirit more than they cure the body, should never be lost to the world.
Livingstone’s dream of bringing civilization’s light to the “dark continent” appears daunting. But he’s determined to bring morals, music, and medicine to savage tribes, even staying on in Africa instead of returning to civilization to boast of his unprecedented discoveries and deeds. Stanley soon swaps his habitual journalistic cynicism with respect for the man’s uprightness, hard work, kindness, humility, and commitment.
If Stanley’s search for Livingstone is one journey, his finding him is another: a discovery of a greatness hidden from the developed world. Back in that world (this time in Livingstone’s Britain), the Society of British Geographers is unmoved by Stanley’s revelations of having found Livingstone.
Prodded by Globe publisher Lord Tyce (Charles Coburn) who ran news of Livingstone’s “death” and is now desperate to save face, the Society rebukes Stanley. Now, he wonders if proving that Livingstone’s alive will be as hard as finding him ever was. Is the world about to lose Livingstone again?
Biographer Paul D. Bayly wrote that the real-life Livingstone reached Africa as a 28-year-old, then traveled “29,000 miles uncovering what lay beyond rivers and mountain ranges where no other white man had ever been.” Before he died in 1873, he called for a global campaign against Arab-controlled slave-trading in East Africa. Not entirely coincidentally, just years later, the Berlin Act of 1885, signed by 13 European nations, included a resolution to help in “suppressing slavery.”
A Touching Tribute
It would’ve been impossible for any 1930s film to capture the breadth of Livingstone’s feats, but King does well, slowing his narrative’s pace, using Tracy’s gentle voiceover to lend color to Stanley’s bravado, doubt, fear, despair, and hope. Tracy’s impassioned climactic four-minute speech to recalcitrant geographers is arresting, as is Coburn’s onslaught on the integrity of both Stanley and Livingstone.Known for his work on adventure films, Otto Brewer doubles up as co-director in Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda. His camera captures just how grueling Stanley’s quest is: starvation, dehydration, fatigue, pestilence, scorching sun, pouring rain, grass as tall as elephants. You see bed-ridden Stanley, delirious with fever, bathed in sweat, and on the brink of madness as his once-smug search staggers to a shuffle. But you also see Africa’s breathtaking beauty: lions, giraffes, antelopes, hippos, cheetahs, and flamingoes.
Livingstone equates ignorance with fear. For it’s fear that drives savages to attack civilized men, and civilized men to counter-attack tribes; a 10-minute pitched battle ensues when tribes mistake Stanley’s search party for a slave caravan. This is precisely why Livingstone pleads for Stanley’s honest reportage, to remove the white man’s fear of “blank spaces on the map.”
Once, treating an injured boy, Livingstone tells Stanley, who is bewildered at the boy’s terrified stare, “In his tribe, stranger and enemy are the same word.”
In a nod to Livingstone’s missionary manner, King likens the first encounter between the two men to that in the Biblical parable of the prodigal son. Livingstone, as father figure, is the one who’s out of his cottage, stepping toward Stanley (bone-weary, scruffy, and rooted to the spot); Livingstone throws his arm around Stanley, uses the honorific “my son,” and celebrates the occasion by ordering the fatted pig, not the parable’s calf, for dinner. It’s as if Livingstone is looking for Stanley, not the other way around.
Earlier, Stanley fears that one of Livingstone’s natives is stealing his handheld mirror. Livingstone reassures Stanley, implying that the man is merely fascinated at finding himself in his reflection.
Later, as he grows in wisdom from accompanying Livingstone, Stanley symbolically returns that mirror to the native, through Livingstone. For, in finding Livingstone, Stanley has also found himself.
