By Lee Pfeiffer
MGM has released director Lewis Gilbert's 1964 film The 7th Dawn on DVD- albeit, through their new burn-to-DVD program. Gilbert discusses the movie in an exclusive interview with Matthew Field in Cinema Retro issue #18. The movie has long been on the "wanted" list of retro film fans who had to be satisfied with trying to catch it on periodic showings on Turner Classic Movies. This is a thoroughly engrossing, adult drama with an unusuial setting and story background. The movie begins on the final day of WWII and centers on three disparate friends: an American named Ferris (William Holden), a French woman, Dhana (Capucine) and a Malaysianm, Ng (Tetsuro Tamba) who have led guerilla forces against the Japanese occupation in Malaya. The three close friends a jubilant in victory, after having suffered from fighting in the jungle for extended periods. At the end of the war, Ng goes off to Moscow to pursue communist political training. The apolitical Ferris stays behind, with Malaya now under British occupation. He thrives as a local rubber plantation owner, and Dhana is his lover, despite her frustration with Ferris' womanizing. The story advances to 1953, with Malayans now impatient for independence from England, which is easing toward granting their demands, but at a snail's pace. Ng returns to Malaya to try to instigate communist-inspired violent uprisings. To his sympathizers, he is a freedom fighter. To the British, he is a terrorist and the most wanted man in the nation.