Trader Horn (1931)
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Trader Horn Movie Review
Trader Horn is a 1931 adventure film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring Harry Carey and Edwina Booth. It’s a highly dated, ridiculously racist movie.
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“Don’t you understand?
White people must help each other“
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It follows safari adventures in Africa of two white men who eventually meet a white woman and want to rescue her from the blacks. If that sounds horribly racist to you, that’s because it absolutely is. This is the type of movie that wouldn’t fly today under any possible circumstance and thankfully so as it’s so hateful in its approach.
Admittedly, we get one exception here which is the friendship between a main character and his black friend and that was so moving. His death and that ending scene are the two greatest parts of an otherwise infuriatingly racist movie which not only presents black people as inferior and crazier than white people, but it also shows Africans as retrograde savages who need discipline. A horrible viewpoint for sure.
Trader Horn otherwise would have been a pretty solid movie as it’s a type of an old-fashioned adventure flick from the thirties which I adore, but only in the making as they unfortunately added a story, and a very bad one, to the film and thus ruined what otherwise could have been a spirited African adventure which is the first feature film shot on that continent.
The characters are mediocre and the acting is too. Only Harry Carey is even remotely memorable and quite good in his role whereas others are frustratingly bad, especially Duncan Renaldo as naive and annoying Peru. Edwina Booth got malaria while filming this movie and eventually that ruined her career and it wasn’t worth it as the role is horribly sexist and simply unfortunate.
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Many problems faced the production of Trader Horn including the adding of the sound later on in the stage of the production as at first it was a silent movie. And it shows as the dialogue sounds different and not coming from the African landscapes at all. Very odd. The cinematography though is fantastic and groundbreaking for its time, further influencing ‘King Kong’ in its wake. But other than that, the film is a pretty mediocre and, needless to say, odd Best Picture nominee.
Undeserved Best Picture nominee Trader Horn is groundbreaking in its cinematography as the first movie shot in Africa. It also has a couple of moving scenes and some fine adventurous elements. But the characters and acting are mediocre, the added plot is pretty bad and the whole movie is incredibly dated in its sexism and particularly blatant racism and xenophobia.
