I've mentioned the past few days how there are several movies on my DVR that are being reaired on TCM in fairly quick succession. The third of them to get a blog post of its own is the 1942 version of The Jungle Book, which you can see tomorrow, May 11, at 6:00 AM.
This version of the Jungle Book was made by the Korda brothers, who were born in Hungary but left for the UK where they started making a series of highly-regard movies. Then World War II came to Europe, so the brothers left for Hollywood where they set up another version of their independent production company, which would explain the presence of Hollywood character actors in the cast along with the lack of the spelling "colour" in the credits. Anyhow, the movie starts off with an establish shot of a British woman, presumably the wife of either a British colonial governor or Army officer, traveling through India with an Anglified Indian. The two happen upon an elderly storyteller, who will tell you some interesting stories if you just support him by putting coins in his cup....
Flash back some decades, to a village in a jungle part of India. Buldeo (Joseph Calleia) is a prominent local in the village, talking about a big future for the village, together tiwh the town barber (John Qualen, not hiding his usual accent), and a pandit (Frank Puglia). Since the village is in the jungle, they're not far from all sorts of wild animals, and sure enough when a baby wanders off and the baby'd father goes looking for him, a tiger comes and attacks the father. The baby, Mowgli, wanders into a cave where he is protected by a pack of wolves who presumably have a similar fear of the tiger, called Shere Khan.
Mowgli learns how to communicate with the animals, as well as learning all the ways of the jungle and what's safe and what isn't, to an extent that no normal human ever could. But on reaching adolescence, Mowgli (now played by Sabu) goes exploring for himself, and winds up in the village where he had been born and where many of the old locals still live, not that he'd recognize him. In any case, they take him in, and Buldeo's daughter becomes friendly with Mowgli more than anybody else. Indeed, you could call it love, although the movie doesn't really wind up going down that road.
Mowgli takes the girl, Mahala, out into the jungle, where he's safe because he knows the jungle ways, although Mahala obviously doesn't feel safe and who could blame her. But Mowgli knows a place in the jungle that's an overrun ghost town where some wealthy people lived generations ago. They left behind a bunch of gold coins and various jewels, although the snakes tell Mowgli that trying to claim that wealth is going to come with a curse. And not that Mowgli has ever had need of such wealth. The villagers, of course, would want it if they knew of its existence. Mahala isn't going to reveal it, but she does make the mistake of taking one gold coin by which to remember the ruins.
As you might guess, Buldeo finds out, and he, the barber, and the pundit set out to find the village, following Mowgli with the intent of killing him. Mowgli, for his part, is also on a quest to kill Shere Khan to get revenge for the tiger having killed his father. As for the three villagers, well, if you've seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre, you can probably think of the sort of thing that's going to happen to them. Except that those guys were in a relatively deserted area. Buldeo could do a lot more damage by setting the forest on fire.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this version of The Jungle Book came out in 1942, with all the implications that carries. One is that there weren't very many people of Indian descent in Hollywood at the time, which is why you get actors like John Qualen made up to look like they're from the Subcontinet. At the same time, India would have been a far more exotic place in 1942 -- especially in America since the place wasn't our colony -- in the eyes of westerners. So it's a lot easier to imagine audiences overlooking the use of backlots and being able to suspend disblief.
It helps that the story is a pretty good one, and somewhat surprisingly filled with themes of man's greed against Mother Nature, something that transcends race and time. The vivid Technicolor photography also helps, even if there's no location shooting. Granted, there are times when the process photography is apparent. But for the most part the story holds up, without any distracting Disney songs.
This version of The Jungle Book is definitely worth a watch.
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