Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2.2 1950 adaptation - The rule of exteriors
Only 13 years later, in 1950, the movie was reshot by American MGM.
The map used in this movie is virtually a replica of the Haggard's original
purist map can be contributed to modernistic trends and expansion of ab-
stract art after the Second World War. Through the movie, the beginning
of the shift in perception of “primitive cultures” can also be seen. Native
African population does not seem as wholly dependent on colonizers as in
case of the earlier adaptation nor is source of a “comic relief”. This shift
from Eurocentric point of view was finished by the map portrayal in adap-
tation from 1985.
From a cartographer's point of view, the most interesting question is why
moviemakers felt the necessity to change the map orientation by rotating it
approximately 90 degrees to the left? To understand this, it is necessary to
say that the King Solomon's mines map is not the only map displayed in
the movie. As the original map has no indication of its location on the
Earth, moviemakers felt the necessity to introduce viewers into a broader
regional context. This introduction is done by displaying a wall chart of the
African continent with inscription “unexplored region” in its centre. The
close up on the wall chart displays an area roughly from the Tanzanian and
Kenyan coast to centre of the Democratic Republic of Congo - which are
regions where the movie was shot. It is probable that the rotation of the
King Solomon's mines map was done by movie makers purely for the sake
of coordination of the King Solomon's mines map with exteriors used dur-
ing shooting of the movie. The logical progression of the colonial explora-
tion is from the coast to the continents interior. The region, where shooting
of the movie was done, has the coast on the east, so the map was rotated
