{"id":17329,"date":"2018-02-09T03:46:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17329"},"modified":"2018-02-10T01:55:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T06:55:10","slug":"film-sarumba-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17329","title":{"rendered":"Film: Sarumba (1950)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Film<\/strong>: Poor<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> n\/a<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong> n\/a<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Musical \/ Romance<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> Although duty-bound, Joe skips returning to a merchant ship and risks arrest to be with a pretty dancer in pre-Castro Cuba. Will their fusion of two Latin dances rekindle a weakening romance?<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 n\/a<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally called Samba<\/strong>, this low budget production by poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films<\/a> was completed in 1947 but remained unreleased for 3 years largely because it was an utterly forgettable attempt to film a musical in Cuba.<\/p>\n

The main titles may exclaim \u2018filmed entirely on location\u2019 in the pre-Castro nation, but there\u2019s shockingly little material that reveals any local colour. Co-produced by fallen-from-grace director Marion Gering, Sarumba<\/strong> may have been all along a lame attempt to feign a return to directing after a 10 gap \u2013 Gering was a prominent director at Paramount until 1937, when according to author Peter Roffman, he \u2018drank his way our of Hollywood.’<\/p>\n

If Sarumba<\/strong> was planned as a comeback, the script lacked anything beyond a threadbare tale of Joe Thomas (former Our Gang member \/ stage dancer Tommy Wonder), a merchant marine who becomes a wanted man after staying in Havana to be with local dancer Hildita (Doris Dowling). Shipping magnate Senor Valdez (Michael Whalen) supposedly has the police looking for the amateur hoofer, but there\u2019s never any threat of arrest and extradition because like many story elements, they were never thought through and finalized in the shooting script, or Gering wasted so much time on multiple takes that whole scenes & sequences were cut from the shooting script, perhaps explaining the film\u2019s very abrupt 57 minutes.<\/p>\n

Fear of arrest only comes into play when Joe \u2018risks it all\u2019 to honor his debut duet with Hildita at an important club, and without any major kerfuffle, Valdez easily drops the charges because Hildita\u2019s best friend Maria (Dee Taylor) put him in a swell state of mind to nab Valdez for herself.<\/p>\n

The seeded and resolved conflicts are perfunctorily enacted, the dialogue stale as week-old toast, but what really kills the film is Gering\u2019s almost amateurish direction that shows little interest or care in anything. If there\u2019s any visual motif, it\u2019s tracking shots, but many resemble a film student\u2019s attempt to evoke a bit of Josef Von Sternbergian style by allowing fences, meshes, plants, and extras to dominate the foreground; the problem is the angles are bad, the real areas of interest obscured, and Gering often creates master shots that perambulate a bit to the left and a wee bit to the right, but are visually dull.<\/p>\n

A perfect example is Hildita and Joe\u2019s first performance at a club, which Gering covers in two shots: a slight tracking shot where their performance is often blocked by seated male observers who aren\u2019t saying or doing anything interesting; and weird overhead shots that resemble hastily filmed newsreel footage than quality studio material. When the dancing pair make their big debut in a 3-part climactic sequence, Gering sticks the camera to the distant right, and with \u2018natural lighting\u2019 captures their important piece like a home movie shot from the cheap seats. The piece is underlit (maybe a bulb blew?), badly and boringly covered, and the music isn\u2019t especially good.<\/p>\n

The lack of a credited composer also infers the production either used stock music, or managed to record 3-4 cues by local musicians; the handful of cues are recycled throughout the film to fill in sound holes rather than propel or support any drama.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bizarre production that gets so much wrong \u2013 a Jai alai<\/a> court similarly resembles hastily shot newsreel footage, and the same 4 second audience cheers are looped for the scene’s entire length \u2013 and yet the leading 3 actors aren\u2019t terrible; they just can\u2019t save the film. Dowling\u2019s then-boyfriend Wonder is clearly an adept dancer and the pair perform several routines fluidly \u2013 but they\u2019re either badly shot or compacted into a montage with quick wipes, under which plays the score\u2019s most oft-used theme variation. Whalen sticks to playing Valdez as debonair, while Tatum teases her male co-stars a little, but they\u2019ve little material to create even acceptable protagonists.<\/p>\n

The production details of this forgotten dud stem from the letters co-producer Julian Roffman wrote home, and as son Peter Roffman opines in the fascinating book Dear Guelda: The Death and Life of Pioneering Canadian Filmmaker Julian Roffman<\/strong><\/a>, Sarumba<\/strong> was a learning experience on how to never make a movie, either at home or on location.<\/p>\n

Years after Sarumba<\/strong> was released, Gering directed a documentary \u2013 Violated Paradise <\/strong>(1963) \u2013 and then vanished from filmmaking, as did sophomoric scribe Jay Victor and co-producer George P. Quigley, whose only other credits are Murder with Music<\/strong> (1941) and Junction 88<\/strong> (1947). Cinematographer Don Malkames switched primarily to TV shows from B-movies and shorts, but Julian Roffman managed to learn from his first Hollywood gig and later produced & directed the CanCon classics The Bloody Brood<\/strong><\/a> (1959) and the 3D treat The Mask<\/a><\/strong> (1961).<\/p>\n

Co-star Dowling didn’t fare too badly. The career boost from prior hits The Lost Weekend<\/strong> (1945) and The Blue Dahlia<\/strong> (1946) weren\u2019t sullied by Sarumba<\/strong>, as the actress soon appeared in Orson Welles\u2019 Othello<\/strong>, many TV series (Mike Hammer<\/strong>, Daktari<\/strong>, My Living Doll<\/strong>), and had a small role in the killer Lincoln sedan nonsense The Car<\/strong> (1977). Dee Tatum\u2019s 3 other film credits are Fingerprints Don\u2019t Lie<\/strong>, Inside Straight<\/strong>, and Mask of the Dragon<\/strong> (all 1951), after which she apparently retired and married \u201cPappy\u201d Boyington, whose WWII career as a fighter pilot became the basis of Bruce Gamble\u2019s biography and same-titled TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep<\/strong> (1976-1978).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2018 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally called Samba, this low budget production by poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films was completed in 1947 but remained unreleased for 3 years largely because it was an utterly forgettable attempt to film a musical on location in Cuba…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[5022,5501,5499,823,5497,5500,5496,5498],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4vv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17480,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329\/revisions\/17480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}