{"id":11899,"date":"2026-05-15T19:46:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=11899"},"modified":"2026-05-15T19:46:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T00:46:45","slug":"the-7th-dawn-a-favorite-film-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/?p=11899","title":{"rendered":"The 7th Dawn-A favorite film from the past……"},"content":{"rendered":"

1st of a new series\u00a0 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

MOVIES I ENJOYED FROM THE FAR PAST<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

THE 7TH DAWN<\/span><\/h1>\n

1964<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Directed by\u00a0<\/span>Lewis Gilbert<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

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An overlooked William Holden film, I first viewed this political adventure back in the middle 1960\u2019s when it first came to Oklahoma City as a first-run at the Plaza Theater.\u00a0 Even as a 12-year-old, I got the gist of the film,\u00a0based on the 1960 novel\u00a0The Durian Tree<\/em> by Michael Keon.\u00a0 The film, set during the Malayan Emergency, was made in Malaysia eleven years after the conflict.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Director Louis Gilbert gives the viewer a sense of place and time, and the film is beautifully shot.\u00a0 It is like taking a trip to Malaysia in the 1950s, a world you know little about.\u00a0 Holden, along with the beautiful Susanna York and the more mature but just as hot Capucine, gives the story a romantic edge with danger and death just hanging around.\u00a0 It is as if director Gilbert cut his teeth on this film, preparing him for his later James Bond-directed movies.\u00a0 We also get a sense of a country in turmoil, a few years after World War 2, as Southeast Asia was still coping with foreign countries meddling in its politics and ruling its prized possessions as colonial powers.\u00a0 Revolutionaries were the name of violence, and it was not a time of peace.\u00a0 It was a bloody and political world that gave the film its drama.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have revisited the movie many times and, again, am looking for a future viewing soon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have rated the film 3.5 stars out of 5 in my short Letterboxd review.\u00a0 With that, I highly recommend it for a different look at this part of the world and its history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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1st of a new series\u00a0 MOVIES I ENJOYED FROM THE FAR PAST \u00a0 THE 7TH…<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,401,4,7],"tags":[2014,2013,2015,2004],"class_list":["post-11899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-freds-movie-first-take","category-home","category-latest","tag-capucine","tag-lous-gilbert","tag-susanna-york","tag-william-holden"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":5,"today_views":5},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11903,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11899\/revisions\/11903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredsportsextra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}