Sammy Going South – 1963 | 128 mins | Adventure, Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Alexander Mackendrick’s follow-up to the masterful Sweet Smell of Success is the deceivingly bittersweet study in child psychology;exploring conventional ideas about innocence as the young orphan encounters all kinds of danger and criminality with barely a blink of an eye. The episodic films pacing is oddly flaccid and the colour photography sometimes verges on travelogue territory, but it’s nevertheless an absorbing and engaging picture.Of the performances, Edward G Robinson is particularly touching as the friendly diamond smuggler who takes the young boy temporarily under his wing.

Sammy Hartland (Fergus McClelland), aged ten, is orphaned in an air raid at Port Said during the Suez crisis. He sets out alone with a toy compass to find his only relative, Aunt Jane, in Durban. After encounters with a Syrian pedlar, a rich American tourist (Constance Cummings) and her tour guide Bob (Jared Allen), from whom he escapes. He is subsequently handed into the care of Spyros (Paul Stassino), who seeks to return the boy so he can claim ‘expenses’. Sammy again escapes, and meets Cocky Wainwright (Edward G. Robinson),a grizzled old diamond smuggler who becomes a father figure to the young Sammy –much to the irritation of his partner Lenny (Harry H. Corbett). The police,alerted by the guide about Sammy, capture Cocky but Sammy escapes. Aunt Jane comes to police headquarters to ask Cocky about Sammy, but he insists that she must let him complete his rites-of-passage journey alone.