Sudan (1945)

Sudan is another frothy Maria Montez/Jon Hall Technicolor adventure romance from Universal. This time they’re in ancient Egypt.

Montez plays Naila, an Egyptian princess. When her father is murdered she becomes queen and she is determined to avenge her father. Her father was murdered by the bandit followers of an escaped slave named Herua (Turhan Bey).

Naila has a habit of mingling incognito among her people. At the beginning of the movie she has disguised herself as a dancing girl and puts on a show in a wine shop. She decides that this habit of hers might be a useful way to gather the information she needs to find her father’s killers. She heads off into the desert on her way to the horse fair.

What Naila doesn’t know is that she herself is a target. Not for murder. The plan is to capture her and sell her as a slave girl. She does indeed get captured by slavers, and branded as a slave girl. She escapes, gets captured again, escapes again. She gets some help from two good-natured wandering petty criminals, Merab (Jon Hall) and Nebka (Andy Devine). She also gets help from a handsome mysterious stranger and he’s the sort of man with whom she could easily fall in love. Maybe she has fallen in love with him. What she doesn’t know is that this man is Herua, the man responsible for her father’s death.

Naila also does some horse racing. When she set off on her adventure she took with her her prize golden stallion and no horse can beat him in any kind of race. The horse race is where Herua first noticed her.

There are plenty of romantic complications, with two men hopelessly in love with the queen. There are devious plots afoot. Naila is in more danger than she realises.

It’s all rather melodramatic but this isn’t a movie you’re supposed to take seriously and the screenplay by Edmund L. Hartmann has just enough twists to keep things reasonably entertaining. John Rawlins was no more than a journeyman director but he keeps things moving at a good clip and handles the action scenes well enough (although they are very much low-budget action scenes). He also directed Maria Montez and Jon Hall in the rather wonderful Arabian Nights a few years earlier.

There’s quite a bit of rear projection and some obvious matte paintings. Since we were told in the opening voiceover that this is a fantasy tale those things don’t really matter. And the process shots are fairly well done.

There’s not too much spectacle. The budget wasn’t going to stretch that far. The sets are however pretty OK and the costumes are nice. It looks like what it was, a modestly budgeted movie that relies on some lovely Technicolor cinematography.

Maria Montez looks stunning dressed as an Egyptian queen. You can almost overlook the fact that she’s an Egyptian queen with a Spanish accent.

The acting is what you expect. No-one was going to win an Oscar for a movie such as this but all the players are lively and competent. Turhan Bey gives the closest thing to a standout performance as the dashing Herua although he has some competition from George Zucco as the queen’s chief advisor Harodef. Andy Devine is there to provide comic relief but he’s a lot less annoying than usual.

Sudan is included in the new three-movie Maria Montez Blu-Ray set from Kino Lorber. The transfer is excellent.

Sudan is feelgood entertainment. We can see most of the plot twists coming. We don’t mind. We never feel that any of the sympathetic characters are in any great danger but again we don’t mind. It’s a fairy tale. It’s silly and light and fluffy. I just can’t bring myself to dislike a Maria Montez movie. She made better movies than this but it’s still recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Siren of Atlantis (1949) with is Maria Montez’s best movie by far, a movie in which she does some fairly creditable acting.