Strangers at Sunrise

During the Second Boer War in 1900, an American mining engineer is sentenced to death by the British for aiding and abetting the Boer enemy. The engineer escapes from custody and takes refuge at an isolated Boer farm, where he forms a relationship with the Boer family. When three deserters from the British army arrive, the engineer must protect himself and the family.

• George Montgomery as Grant Merrick
• Deana Martin as Julie Beyers
• Brian O'Shaughnessy as Corporal Caine

Filming for Strangers at Sunset began in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 1968.{{Cite news |last=Greenberg |first=Abe |date=July 17, 1968 |title=Abe Greenberg's Voice of Hollywood |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/580675022/?match=1&terms=%22Strangers%20at%20Sunrise%22%20Percival%20Rubens |work=Valley Times (Newspapers.com)}} Deana Martin was confirmed as starring in the film.Martin Kids as Busy as Dean

Manners, Dorothy. The Washington Post and Times-Herald 5 Oct 1968: D30. During filming the stuntman for George Montgomery broke his arm while filming a scene jumping from a roof, making it necessary for a new stuntman to be provided.{{Cite news |date=December 6, 1968 |title=The Mail Man Cometh! |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/580649220/?match=1&terms=%22Strangers%20at%20Sunrise%22%20Deana%20Martin |work=Valley Times (Newspapers.com)}}

Martin filmed a nude scene for Strangers at Sunrise, which received some controversy. Reuters claimed that it was the first nude scene to be filmed for theatrical release in South Africa and noted that stills of the scene were published in the news prior to censor review. The scene was later excised by censors and criticized by the Dutch Reformed Church, who petitioned for South Africa to further strengthen their obscenity laws.{{Cite news |date=August 1, 1969 |title=South Africa's film industry battles church |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/945910357/?match=1&terms=%22Strangers%20at%20Sunrise%22%20Percival%20Rubens |work=Reuters/The Toronto Star (Newspapers.com)}}

Strangers at Sunrise was first released in 1969.{{Cite book |last=Broughton |first=Lee |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Critical_Perspectives_on_the_Western/hKnqDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Strangers+at+Sunrise%22+Percival+Rubens&pg=PA42&printsec=frontcover |title=Critical Perspectives on the Western: From A Fistful of Dollars to Django Unchained |date=2016-09-19 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4422-7243-9 |pages=42 |language=en}}

Leonard Maltin described the film as a "turn-of-the-century South African Western with American mining engineer, attracted by the gold rush".{{Cite book |last=Maltin |first=Leonard |url=https://archive.org/details/leonardmaltins2000leon_1/page/1338/mode/2up?q=+%22Strangers+at+Sunrise%22 |title=Leonard Maltin's movie & video guide |date=2002 |publisher=New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : New American Library |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-451-20649-7}}

Critical perspectives on the Western : from A fistful of dollars to Django unchained found that the film "typically focused on the early settler colonization of southern Africa." and that this "South African—US coproduction [...] is semantically set during the Anglo-Boer War in the Transvaal around 1900. But at a syntactic level the film is very clearly modeled on Shane (George Stevens, 1953)."{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalperspect0000unse_p2k4/page/44/mode/2up?q=%22Strangers+at+Sunrise%22 |title=Critical perspectives on the Western : from A fistful of dollars to Django unchained |date=2016 |publisher=Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-1-4422-7242-2}}

• {{Cite journal |last=Jeffrey |first=Christopher |date=October 2017 |title=South African film music Representation of racial, cultural and national identities, 1931-1969 |url=https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/a785eaaa-da25-4628-aa34-6481cdba4d32/content |journal=PhD dissertation, University of Cape Town}}

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181030/ Strangers at Sunrise] at IMDb
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20180106120445/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b7736af05 Strangers at Sunrise] at BFI

Category:1969 films

Category:South African drama films

Category:English-language South African films

Category:1960s English-language films

Category:1960s South African films

{{SouthAfrica-film-stub}}

Category:Films directed by Percival Rubens