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A chapter from Kipling, in the humorous key of Twain's bee-stung bull. The captivating introduction finds the massive tusker Kala Naga and its miniature mahout (Sabu) with not enough sugarcane for breakfast, the beast lifts the boy with its trunk so he can grab melons from the roof of market huts, the two chow happily while lumbering down the road. (An infant lies on the way, the elephant tiptoes gently over it.) They join the safari caravan organized by the Englishman (Walter Hudd), to "bring back a fine story from the jungle" is the hope. A film twice made, once as raw material shot by Robert J. Flaherty in Mysore, and then again by Zoltan Korda as a fable of colonial India in a Denham studio. The lad mischievously scampers up trees and gravely prays to great idols, "Hop Frog" is his nickname, the Sabu charm is abundant throughout. "No dream. No fever," just the rare imagery of Flaherty's footage—the river bath expanded by Rossellini in India: Matri Bhumi, a tiger prowling out of the foliage to stare down the camera lens, the grumbling and trumpeting of a herd of pachyderms driven into a stockade. Pièce de résistance of documentary and artifice, the dance of the jumbos as an uncanny spectacle not meant for human eyes. ("They will trample the whole world," murmurs the startled observer.) Tremendous groundwork for Korda's Technicolor filming of The Jungle Book, not to mention The Yearling, The Brave One, The Black Stallion, Okja... With W.E. Holloway, Allan Jeayes, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Bruce Gordon, and D.J. Williams. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |