Mister Moses (1965)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Ronald Neame

Writers:

Charles Beaumont (writer)
Max Catto (novel)

Release Date:

14 May 1965 (Finland)

Genre:

Adventure

Tagline:

Joe Moses is his name...stealing Africa is his game!

Plot:

The latter-day Mister (Joe) Moses is a snake-oil pitchman who is chased out of an African village and is found...

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel | Independent Film

Cast

Robert Mitchum	...	Joe Moses
Carroll Baker	...	Julie Anderson
Ian Bannen	...	Robert
Alexander Knox	...	Rev. Anderson
Raymond St. Jacques	...	Ubi
Orlando Martins	...	Chief
Reginald Beckwith	...	Parkhurst

Runtime:

USA:113 min | UK:116 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-12 | Sweden:11

Filming Locations:

Lake Naivasha & Amboselli Game Preserve, Kenya

Company:

Frank Ross Productions

Robert Mitchum and Carroll Baker make a good team

"Mister Moses" is an amiable, lightweight movie that is heavily dependant upon the charisma of its leading players. Luckily for the movie and the audience, one of the stars is Robert Mitchum who had been carrying lightweight movies since his RKO days. It was only during the last phase of his career that Mitchum's merit became recognised. Before then, his skillful underplaying had been misinterpreted as laziness and inability by the unimaginative morons who formed the critical establishment between 1945 and 1960.

Mitchum plays Joe Moses, a carnival trader in Africa and an easy-going cynic, who is chased out of one village at the beginning of the movie. Injured and unconscious, he floats downstream and winds up at another settlement which is due to be moved en bloc because of a new dam scheme. Moses is finagled into leading the reluctant villagers across country to their new settlement.

Because nothing very exciting happens, the star quality of Mitchum and Carroll Baker is what holds the audience's attention. The mid-1960s was the period when Carroll Baker was making her abortive attempt to become the new sex goddess of Hollywood in a series of salacious melodramas for producer Joseph E. Levine. She was ill-suited for that material, but in "Mister Moses" she is liberated from the shackles of aggressive sexiness. Here, deglamorised and natural, she reminds us of how good she was - and how attractive - in her first few movies before she tried to be a replacement for Marilyn Monroe. Baker and Mitchum make a good screen combination.

"Mister Moses" has all but disappeared in recent years, and has yet to make its debut on DVD. This is surprising because it was originally released by United Artists, since taken over by MGM. Movies released by MGM and United Artists have flooded the DVD market in the past two years, but there is still no sign of "Mister Moses".