We know we should be nice to those weird savage people in that African country place, and we know that white people have often done to the natives of that African country place things that are kind of nasty and that we'd really rather not have to talk or think about much or at all, so we've got guilt. This gives us (the assumed Audience Sympathetic To White Guys) places to put both our sympathy and our guilt.
#The naked prey movie#
After a beautiful title sequence, the film welcomes us into a colonialist perspective - hey kids, we're going on a safari! Quickly, we discover it's like most movie safaris, and it's got a Good, Knowledgeable, Responsible White Guy and a Greedy, Ignorant, and Irresponsible White Guy. I would need to watch it again to be sure of any interpretation (not that any interpretation ever feels truly certain), but at the moment I'm tempted to say the plot of The Naked Prey mirrors the progression of representations it offers. It's kind of like Tarzan goes with the Macombers on the Last Safari and ends up in The New World. (The trailer condenses the film into nothing but these clichés, naturally.) Yet it is also very much a movie about the indifference of nature to the struggles of human beings and about both the perils and possibilities within encounters between people of vastly different cultures.
#The naked prey full#
It dutifully includes a checklist of Hollywood clichés about safaris and hunting and "man in the state of nature" (literally, in this case, as the protagonist is known only as Man) and a mythical "Africa" full of "savages". Part of what makes The Naked Prey interesting is that it struggles with conflicting meanings and implications within its representation of colonial and native encounters in 19th century southern Africa. Some of the reviews I've glanced at also state that the film is good but "not politically correct", which is at best a lazy thing to say about it. Actor, director, and producer Cornel Wilde seems mostly to have been forgotten these days - indeed, a variation on that statement can be found in most of the notices and reviews of the Criterion Collection DVD of Wilde's 1965 film The Naked Prey, but though that disc was released in 2008, the movie's profile still seems astoundingly, and unjustifiably, low.
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