Sanders Of The River

Aroview: Fascinatingly skewed epic set in a colonial protectorate in West Africa, where the British Commissioner (Banks) tries to cultivate 'civilized' virtues in an African protege (Robeson), while quelling tribal violence and gun-running white men.

Robeson was understandably upset at the portrayal of Africans as childish savages, but he himself gets a couple of great songs and there's some fairly authentic musical interludes, while the whole production is on an impressively large scale. From the novel by Edgar Wallace.