Haiti: 'Land of Dark Majesty' (1941)

5/10

boblipton4 July 2020

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras to Haiti, where, at the command of cinematographer Robert Carney, they briefly show some street scenes in Cap-Haitien. Then he spends the remainder of this Traveltalk talking about Henri Christophe and his reign as king of Haiti. FItzpatrick seems to be in admiration of Christophe, prefacing his perorations of his accomplishments with comments which were pretty racist even for 1941.

The copy of this travelogue which plays on Turner Classic Movies is in pretty good condition, with a lovely sunset shot to close it out.

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5/10

ruin here ruin there

SnoopyStyle4 July 2020

This starts with market day in the small town of Cap Haitien. Then it's the military. Then it's an old palace and an old citadel of the despotic 19th century king Henri Christophe. I was hoping for local colors of the regular folks but the market is only a small section. After that, it's a ruin here and a ruin there. It's a ruin ruin everywhere. They talk about a long dead dictator that nobody has ever heard of. I think this series is more interested in static monuments and Haiti does not really have that.

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6/10

If you don't count "Spartacus," History's two most famous Real Life . . .

tadpole-596-91825631 January 2019

Warning: Spoilers

. . . slave revolt leaders are "Nat Turner" and "Henri Christophe." Though both of these uprisings took place in backward enclaves near the American East Coast, only one of these men inspired blockbuster film funding from Hollywood's Billionaires' Boys Club in recent years. The "pitch" for one of these rebellion instigators was that he led a few dozen local slaves on a homicide spree before being reduced to axle grease. HAITI: LAND OF DARK MAJESTY presents the case for the Other Dude. This guy lived through the Birth of a Nation, serving as his country's initial President, before becoming its first King. As the DARK MAJESTY narrator tells his tale, this guy was a more whimsical leader than even "Idi Amin," marching an entire regiment of his crack palace guard off a high cliff to demonstrate his Army's intense loyalty to the Crown for a foreign diplomat, as well as building a mountain-top fortress by out-engineering the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Builders. Then, when his poll numbers started to fade, he shot himself dead with a golden bullet, and had his wife slime him in quick lime. He hid his nation's Treasury--750 tons of sterling silver--so well that it's never been found to this day. One of these slave uprising stories is a Sure-Fire Hit; the other a recipe for a Certain Flop. Where do YOU think Hollywood's "Smart Money" went?

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TravelTalks

Michael_Elliott20 October 2009

Haiti: 'Land of Dark Majesty' (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This TravelTalks short takes us to Haiti where we learn that in 1492 Columbus crashed there and is one reason why the majority of people in this Latin American place speak French (for what that's worth). We also learn that the majority of people there are black and that originally the place had been used for trading slaves, which led to a great battle for their freedom. With three million people now there, we learn about the local markets where someone could buy a pound of peas for a penny or be given bananas for free. This is another nice entry in the series with FitzPatrick once again delivering some great narration and keeping the film moving at a nice pace. While watching the film you can't help but feel that a lot of the stuff dealing with the slave days is overlooked to make the U.S. look a tad bit better as they're never mentioned when these days were discussed.

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