Cinema: The New Pictures, Nov. 10, 1958

(3 of 3)

Windom's Way (Rank) is a British attempt, made in burning earnest and blazing Eastman Color, to wrestle with a major sociological question: How has the Communist sickle reaped its impressive political harvests in Southeast Asia? Adapted from the bestselling novel (TIME, June 2, 1952) by James Ramsey Ullman, the picture gives an answer competently calculated to stir a moviegoer's emotions but somewhat unlikely to satisfy his intelligence. The Communists, the film argues, are all too often the only alternative to economic exploitation, official corruption, roughneck rule. The peasants see Red when the future looks black.

As its example, the story takes a village near a British rubber plantation. When the villagers strike for the right to plant their own rice, the plantation manager (Michael Hordern) promptly whistles up his personal bullyboys—the local police. When a mob storms the police compound, the government sends troops, and the villagers take to the hills and to Communism.

The story could have happened. But unfortunately it does not happen convincingly on the screen. The rubber boss is a caricature of Blimperialism. All too many of the Asians are portrayed by actors who are obviously not as brown as they are greasepainted, and who talk rather better English than is commonly heard in the House of Lords. And in most of the scenes of violence, what might easily have seemed real turns out to be merely colossal. Still, Peter Finch plays with skill, charm and conviction as the hero, and in Marne Maitland, who plays a sinister native official, the British have exposed the public to what looks like the nastiest Oriental menace since the Chinese rot.