Tag: 1953

The Tiger and the Flame

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★★½
“The kitten and the candle”

This is the edited and English-dubbed version of the first Indian film released, to have been shot in Technicolor. While becoming a rare example of an Indian movie given a Western release, it was severely cut down, going from its original running time of 148 minutes to a mere 96. Much of this was accomplished by trimming the musical numbers, with all that’s left being the titular ballet, put on by the King of Jhansi (Mubarak) – a bit of an odd scene to leave in. Most of the rest is a reasonably accurate biopic of his wife, Queen Lakshmibai, covering her marriage at a very early age to the King, subsequent widowing, and eventually becoming the local leader at the head of the rebellion against the British in the late eighteen fifties.

One particularly interesting aspect is the way Modi (who produced the film, as well as directing and starring in it) brought on board a significant amount of Hollywood talent to work on the project. These were led by cinematographer Ernest Haller, who won an Oscar for his work on Gone With The Wind. Certainly, in this Westernized version, it plays like a thoroughly solid Hollywood biopic, even if rather more authentic in its ethnic casting. Well, at least in one direction; the British roles are also played by Indians. I’m a bit surprised it was a commercial failure in its home territory, especially considering it was released only 5½ years after the country gained its real independence from Britain. You’d think that would have made its topic resonate well with a local audience.

However, with the obvious caveat that I’m going off the abbreviated, dubbed version, I can perhaps see why. It’s an impressive spectacle – with a couple of battle sequences which are particularly impressive. However, it comes over as the fifties equivalent of disaster porn, being empty visuals without any real emotional content. And, say what you like about Bollywood movies, it’s the emotional content which typically powers them. Local viewers were also apparently unimpressed by the lead actress – not coincidentally, the director’s wife – being in her mid-thirties and thus too old to play the heroine.

Personally, I didn’t feel that was too much of a problem. However, I didn’t get any sense of the characters involved. Lakshmibai is very much a figurehead, rather than an active participant, whose activity is largely limited to giving mildly stirring speeches to her soldiers. Admittedly, we have to bear in mind both the era and the source. But if you consider that Anne of the Indies pre-dated this by two years, it’s clear the era was not an absolute impediment. That does a much better job of mixing history and sword-play, while still giving you reason to care about the people wielding the weapons. This is closer to a pretty costume drama than a heroic tale of rebellion, and offers little insight into how Lakshmibai was able to lead an army.

Dir: Sohrab Modi
Star: Mehtab, Mubarak, Sohrab Modi, Sapru
a.k.a. Jhansi Ki Rani

Woman They Almost Lynched

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★★★½
“She’s more cold-blooded than any man I’ve ever seen.”

This Western was released in 1953, and feels decades ahead of its time. It’s set toward the end of the Civil War, in the town of Border City, which sits exactly on the dividing line between North and South. A settlement built on mining, it has remained a neutral zone under strictly enforced rules laid down by Mayor Delilah Courtney, selling lead to both sides for their bullets. As well as Yankee and Confederate soldiers in the area, the picture is complicated by Quantrill’s Raiders, a group of independent (yet generally pro-South) soldiers under Charles Quantrill (Donlevy). [They really existed, and as the film reveals, had some well-known names in their ranks]

Quantrill arrives in town alongside Sally Maris (Leslie), there to visit her brother, Bill, who runs the local saloon. However, tensions are high, since a couple of years earlier, Quantrill had abducted Bill’s girlfriend, Kate (Totter), taking her as his wife. Kate instigates a gunfight in which her husband shoots Bill, and after some doubts, Sally takes over the saloon. But Kate won’t let it lie, and her enmity leads to a gunfight between the women, which Sally wins, although she refuses to finish the wounded Kate off. When the Yankee army rides in, seeking to end Quantrill’s group, she shelters Kate, despite all that has happened. Meanwhile, Sally has fallen for Lance (Lund), a supervisor at the local mine, who is playing a dangerous game as an undercover agent for the Confederacy.

A lot to unpack in a brisk 90 minutes, with a great concept, of which I’d like to have seen more use made. An entire film about Mayor Courtney and her hardcore approach to neutrality (which includes summary execution for anyone she perceives as threatening the balance) would have been worth the watch. But it’s mostly the Sally/Kate dynamic which drives the film, leading to a saloon cat-fight after Kate threatens to start singing Dixie – an incendiary act which could easily trigger a blood-bath. Even more impressively, it escalates into the duel mentioned above (and shown below) – is it the first gun-fight in cinema, solely between two women? It’s a spectator sport, with the rest of the town watching in fascination; the men on both sides simply let things unfold as they may.

Though it’s really Sally’s story, Kate gets the poster and is also the subject of the tagline at the top. Proof, once more, that bad girls have more fun. There was, apparently, a difference in approach between the two actresses, Joan Leslie saying, “Audrey later told me she played the whole thing for farce, while I was doing it straight.” Yet fifties farce turns into female empowerment when viewed through a 21st-century lens, especially when Kate is lamenting her husband’s hold over her, which is positively #MeToo in tone: “At first I fought him. I tried every way I knew to try and escape. And later on, I became just like him.” Yet she’s actually far more of a dangerous wild-card than Quantrill.

I must say, Sally’s transition from straitlaced lady to whorehouse madam is rather jarring, and it’s never satisfactorily explained why she’s such an expert shot. The film never quite manages to recapture the refreshing energy of her duel against Kate; it feels like that should have been the climax, rather than petering out at the end of the war, with everyone joining in a rousing chorus of Dixie. And Totter’s pair of musical numbers appear to have strayed in from another film entirely. Yet the two leads are more than capable of carrying this: it’s especially interesting to note how this foreshadows the similarly-themed, yet much better known, Johnny Guitar, released a year later.

Dir: Allan Dwan
Star: Joan Leslie, John Lund, Audrey Totter, Brian Donlevy

Miss Robin Crusoe

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★★★
“Crusoe is not consent”

miss_robin_crusoe_poster_03A solid re-telling of the Robinson Crusoe story by Daniel Defoe, it switches things up by turning the hero into a heroine, Robin Crusoe (Blake, best known as saloon owner Kitty Russell from Gunsmoke). Taken to sea by her captain father as a cheap alternative to a cabin-boy, she is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and stranded on a deserted island [albeit one apparently well-stocked with make-up and hair-care products]. The first half follows the story fairly closely, as she rescues Friday (Hayes) from her captors, and works on a boat with which she hopes to escape the island. But things then diverge, with the washing up of another survivor, Jonathan (Nader). With Robin having been severely soured on men by her previous ship-board experiences, one showing up on her island paradise is the last thing she wants, and she’s disinclined to trust the new arrival. But there’s another problem: the boat can only hold two people.

It’s much more effective before he shows up, with the two women holding their own against the perils and terrors of life with courage. A couple of moments which stand out are Friday gazing at the sleeping Ms. Crusoe (which, along with the former’s jealousy toward Jonathan implies an almost Sapphic aspect, decades ahead of the year this came out, 1954). and the spectacular manner in which the natives dispose of their other captive: Eli Roth’s Green Inferno will be hard pushed to match the concept. After Jonathan arrives, the film becomes much weaker. Oh, it starts innocently enough, with him popping over to borrow a saw, but you just know that Robin is going to end up falling for him – indeed, rolling around on the beach in a manner clearly inspired by the previous year’s From Here to Eternity. But getting there, requires him to push his attentions on her, in a way which would now certainly be considered sexual harassment and, on some campuses, likely assault. That aspect of the movie has not aged well at all.

While chunks of this are severely sound-staged, there are times where filming was clearly done on location, and things are a lot better for it. The score also punches above it’s weight, coming from composer Elmer Bernstein, before the first of his 14 Oscar nomination – perhaps thank Senator McCarthy for that, as this was around the period Bernstein was blacklisted from major motion pictures for his “Communist tendencies.” On the other hand, the finale ends up being a disappointing combination of macho heroism and deus ex machina that is a good deal less satisfying than the film merits. Still, the overall product is a good deal better than I expected going in, though falls short of the impressive standards set early on.

Dir: Eugene Frenke
Star: Amanda Blake, George Nader, Rosalind Hayes