Liminality and the End of Empire in The 7th Dawn

Abstract

This article reassesses the impact of The 7th Dawn, a British adventure drama from 1964 about the Malayan Emergency. Using a contextual methodology, it examines the film as a product of the Cold War and against the background of previous British films made about the Emergency. Key to understanding the film is its representation of Malaya as a liminal space undergoing a transition to independence and a reflection of that political and physical state in the leading protagonist as a liminal individual undergoing a psychological transition. Among the contextual issues addressed are how colonialism during a time of transition to Malayan independence is seen through the film’s imagery, how ethnic differences are portrayed and how individual roles came to stand for political ideologies. Through formal textual analysis, the study of biographies, memoirs and original texts, as well as through references to film history, the article asserts that this hitherto neglected film should be seen as reflective of a turning point in the depiction of colonialism and attitudes towards race and ethnicity in English language feature films about South East Asia.