Lost in the Stars (1974)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Daniel Mann

Writers:

Maxwell Anderson (play)
Alfred Hayes (writer)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

The shattering drama, the haunting music, the unforgettable love story.

Plot Keywords:

Remake | Based On Novel | Based On Play

Cast

Brock Peters	...	Stephen Kumalo
Melba Moore	...	Irina
Raymond St. Jacques	...	John Kumalo
Clifton Davis	...	Absalom
Paul Rogers	...	James Jarvis
Paula Kelly	...	Rose
Alan Weeks	...	Matthew
Paulene Myers	...	Grace
John Williams	...	Judge
Ivor Barry	...	Carmichael
Harvey Jason	...	Arthur Jarvis
Ji-Tu Cumbuka	...	Johannes
H.B. Barnum III	...	Alex
Myrna White	...	Linda
Bill Glover	...	Eland

Also Known As:

Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson's Lost in the Stars (Australia) (DVD box title) (USA) (poster title)

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Australia:PG | USA:G

Filming Locations:

Cottage Grove, Oregon, USA

Company:

Cinévision Ltée

Trivia:

The New York production of "Lost in the Stars" by Maxwell Anderson opened at the Mark Hellinger Theater in New York on July 1, 1950, and ran for 273 performances.

Movie Connections:

Version of Cry, the Beloved Country (1951)

Reconciliation And Hope

The one musical production of that batch of classics that the American Film Institute produced in 1973-1974 is this classic Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson adaption of Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. Lost in the Stars is listed as a musical tragedy and that is an apt description. There are few laughs in this one.

There was a non-musical film of Cry the Beloved Country done in 1950 under British auspices that was shot in the Union of South Africa right under the noses of the apartheid government. Canada Lee was an impressive Stephen Kumalo in search of his runaway son in Johannesburg. Brock Peters ably fills those shoes and sings the Weill-Anderson songs magnificently.

Kumalo is a minister who's son Absalom, played by Clifton Davis, like his biblical namesake has grown up to be a major disappointment. While in Johannesburg he falls in with bad company, impregnates Melba Moore, and participates in an armed robbery gone bad where he shoots a wealthy white landowner's son. As it turns out the deceased was quite the liberal on race relations which complicates a difficult situation.

Still Peters does what he can to pick up the pieces of his tattered family and together with the father of the deceased try to mend their lives. The two are aching symbols of a country torn terribly apart by racism.

Weill's best known songs from Lost in the Stars are the title song and Our Little Grey House and Stay Well. Bing Crosby recorded both of the last two which are sung by Peters and Moore respectively on the film back when the show was in its first run on Broadway. Frank Sinatra did a superb version of Lost in the Stars on his album The Concert Sinatra and that song is sung by Peters in the film.

Brock Peters had done a revival of Lost in the Stars on Broadway in 1972 so we are lucky indeed to have his performance preserved on film.

Lost in the Stars was a tragic show that carried a message that men of good will can still live together despite the awful things we do to each other. Though Alan Paton died before the apartheid government finally fell, Brock Peters lived long enough to see the peaceful revolution of South Africa, remarkable as our own civil rights revolution or the change in government in India where whole societies did not raise the sword to create change.

The show is about reconciliation and hope and should not be missed.