Canada Lee stars as a village priest in South Africa who must travel to the dreaded city of no return - Johannesburg to find his sister, now a prostitute and his son, who, when he finally finds him, has been arrested for the murder of a white man.

Based on the acclaimed novel, this is a deeply serious but quite subtle essay on the inevitable coming of apartheid in South Africa. Whilst it is all rather depressing, the story still gives hope for the country slowly descending into the abyss. Lee is convincing as the gentle, goodly but deeply naive man of god, who ultimately must redeem himself. This is against a wealthy white land owner and father of the murdered man, played by Charles Carson who learns from his dead son's writings that segregation is not the answer. The supporting cast is strong with solid turns from Geoffrey Keen, Joyce Carey, Michael Goodliffe and Sidney Poitier in an early role as a devout, but strong and powerful priest who helps Lee.

Serious and compelling stuff. Sad that the poster for the film only shows the supporting white cast members, sort of missing the point.

I have not seen the remake and have no interest in seeing it, as I was very happy with this film and can't think WHY you'd want to mess with such a fine film (of course, when has this stopped Hollywood in the past?). I think part of the reason I loved the film is that it was NOT a simple anti-Apartheid film. While Apartheid is dealt with, I loved and respected how the evil that the film centers upon was a black man senselessly killing an innocent white person. It really took guts to attack this evil institution AND yet admit the senselessness of this murder.

However, the movie does not dwell on this murderer but on his very decent father, the reverend. You can really tell that the old man is completely torn and racked with pain over his son's deeds. And, no matter what he says or does to the victim's decent father (a man who himself is against Apartheid),he can't undo the act. Amazingly, the victim's father understands and appreciates this. So in the end, you are left with two fundamentally decent men who are struggling to come to terms with senseless violence but maintain their humanity and dignity. A brilliant film that is about people and society.

A really good film could be made about the making of Cry, the Beloved Country which in itself is a landmark film about the early stages of the formal apartheid society in the Union of South Africa.

There's a famous story of Alfred Hitchcock shooting the scene with Cary Grant fleeing the United Nations on the sly with a hidden camera because the UN would not grant him permission to film. That's nothing to what Zoltan Korda had to just even getting Canada Lee and young Sidney Poitier into South Africa in the guise of houseboys. He filmed all the outdoor stuff on location there and the government never caught on. Had they caught on it might have meant prison, it certainly at a minimum would have resulted in deportation.,

Canada Lee plays Reverend Stephen Kumalo who comes to Johannesburg in search of his missing son Absalom. Another man of the cloth, Sidney Poitier helps him search for his son who among other things has gotten a woman pregnant and has committed murder during a robbery attempt in a fit of panic.

The rest of the story is not a pleasant one, but strangely uplifting as Lee, father of the murderer and the father of the victim who was a liberal South African fighting the apartheid regime pledge mutually out of their grief to work for a just society. It took a long time and it's not all together there yet, but South Africa is one of the great success stories of the past century about people of good will righting terrible wrongs.

Alan Paton the author was a prophet with no honor in his own country. His book, a world best seller, was banned in the Union of South Africa and Paton himself ostracized. Paton was a committed Christian who really did believe that all people were indeed equal and fought for that ideal all his life. He died in the mid eighties and sadly did not live to see the fall of apartheid.

Though a big budget film of Cry, the Beloved Country came out in the nineties, this time with the cooperation of the Mandela government, this film still sets a high standard just for courage in the making.