Viewers enchanted by Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger's 1940
The Thief of Bagdad
will need little encouragement to sample more early
film work by the remarkable actor Sabu. One of the
most unique stars of the late 1930s was discovered
under the name Selar Shaik, tending elephants in
India. In Europe and America, where the idea of a
real "jungle boy" stirred imaginations fired up by
Edgar Rice Burroughs'
Tarzan character. To
audiences around the world Sabu was almost a fantasy
figure, a tiny but limber Indian fellow who balanced
a bright personality with fantasies of a natural
existence in the almost-wilderness.
Alexander Korda was already the biggest producer in
England and perhaps Europe as well; the maker of
prestige films practically
was the British
film industry for a number of years. To interpret the
stories of writers Rudyard Kipling and A.E.W. Mason,
Korda sent film crews to India and Africa, often with
cameraman Osmond Borradaile, who took second position
on
Jungle Book and
The Four
Feathers despite filming dazzling Technicolor
images under extremely hostile conditions. The
location scenes for these films were seamlessly
blended with scenes shot back in England, often
months later. Eclipse's Series 30 disc set
Sabu! rounds up the actor's remaining three
Korda pictures, each of which is a special cinematic
treat.
Elephant Boy immediately captured hearts and
imaginations and even won a Venice film festival best
direction prize for its two directors, Zoltáan
Korda and ethnographic filmmaker Robert Flaherty. The
original story is a chapter from Rudyard Kipling's
The Jungle Book, turned into an appealing
colonial adventure with elements of both documentary
and fantasy. Young Toomai (Sabu) tends his father's
elephant, the towering Kala Nag, so well that they're
practically a symbiotic pair, bathing together in the
river and cooperating to steal melons ripening on the
market rooftops. Englishman Petersen (Walter Hudd) is
gathering a safari to capture more elephants for
construction work. He immediately chooses the
impressive Kala Nag, and when he sees Toomai's ease
in handling the enormous monster, allows the boy to
come on the dangerous trek as well. When the elephant
herds prove elusive and tragedy strikes the caravan,
jealous handlers declare Kala Nag to be a hazard.
Fearing that his elephant companion will be shot,
Toomai flees with him into the wilderness. He then
stumbles upon a secret gathering place for hundreds
of pachyderms, and witnesses their mysterious
rituals.
Elephant Boy is enchants audiences from the
moment Sabu scrambles atop his beloved friend's
enormous head. Kala Nag picks his tiny handler up in
his trunk and helps him ascend, and they stroll about
with such confidence that the elephant can step over
and around a baby without causing alarm (we're
alarmed anyway). In footage usually credited to
Robert Flaherty, the maker of the semi-documentaries
Nanook of the North and
Man of Aran,
early scenes allow us to watch as Toomai takes Kala
Nag to the river for a good wash. Not far away, a
mother and calf bathe as well. The baby cavorts in
the water so happily that it must have been an
animation source inspiration for Walt Disney's
Dumbo. We're told that Flaherty made his Korda
connection years before, in attempt to sell the mogul
on an essentially similar story about a Mexican boy
and his bull.
The colonial vision of
Elephant Boy posits
India as a happy place under English administration,
and Petersen is a wise fellow. The
Sahib
exercises his prerogatives with admirable restraint,
never losing his patience despite hardship and
squabbles among the handlers. When Toomai absconds
with Kala Nag, Petersen blames himself. The script
smartly allows the naíve but ethical Toomai to
follow his heart and earn an honored position among
the handlers, even though he's still just a child.
More political minds might see this as a pretty
feeble reward, but
Elephant Boy makes Toomai's
promotion into a great honor.
Adding to the film's charm is Sabu's natural speaking
voice. The highly intelligent actor spoke no English
but was not dubbed by another: he learned his lines
phonetically, a dodge than only makes him sound more
authentic. With his bright eyes and beaming smile,
Sabu became England's next major star.
A very young Wilfrid Hyde-White (of
My Fair
Lady) has a role as a colonial administrator.
With the use of doubles and matching sets back in
England, it's possible that few if any of the Anglo
actors even went to India. The film's illusion of
continuity is masterful.
The Technicolor production
The Drum (released
in America as
Drums) is a more traditional
colonial military adventure from the author of
The
Four Feathers, A.E..W. Mason. Sabu has top
billing in a story of a treacherous breakaway warlord
set in the tribal desert of northern India, in what
is now Pakistan. The story takes place in the 1920s,
and the script by Lajos Biró is clearly meant
to bolster English-Indian relations. Cast with star
talent and climaxing in an exciting pitched battle,
The Drum is also a guaranteed popcorn matinee
performer.
The cocky young Prince Azim (Sabu) greets an infantry
column headed by Captain Carruthers (Roger Livesey)
with a clever trick to see if the English can be
easily fooled. Carruthers sees through Azim's charade
and the two become fast friends, promising always to
be truthful with each other. The British want to
secure this corner of the Kingdom against armed
incursions from the north, and unknown forces are
importing machine guns and training rebels in their
use., When his chieftain father is assassinated by
his wicked uncle Prince Ghul (Raymond Massey), the
honest young Azim finds himself the pawn in a cruel
power play. The boy barely escapes alive and must
pretend to be a beggar in the nearest city, where he
appeals to Carruthers and his wife (Valerie Hobson)
for aid. Carruthers has guessed Prince Ghul's
strategy, but diplomatic necessity forces him to
accept Ghul's invitation to take 50 troops to a
dinner at the palace. Azim can't convince Carruthers'
superiors of the threat, and risks his life to warn
his new friend of the death trap that awaits him --
Prince Ghul has surrounded the pavilion with machine
gunners.
The Drum must have been a source of great
national pride, as it presents the English Army as a
beacon of stability and goodwill in India. Sabu even
makes friends with a boastful young drummer-boy
(Desmond Tester) who teaches him how to tap out a
special recognition signal. Just as with Kipling's
Gunga Din, Azim proves his loyalty by warning
Carruthers, precipitating an unusually violent
shoot-out between a hundred armed men in a confined
space. The sinister Ghul (sounds like Ghoul) is not a
religious fanatic, and makes a point of suppressing a
fundamentalist calling for holy war. Having
experienced real war with the Turks at Gallipoli,
Ghul believes that he can only win against the
colonial armies by creating a rebel alliance and
leading the English enemy into a trap. Raymond Massey
plays Prince Guhl as a scheming opportunist, hoarding
cash for a quick getaway should his dastardly coup
not pan out.
Blessed with an amazingly sincere voice, actor Roger
Livesey oozes British reserve and honor. Leaving for
a reception that he knows to be an ambush, Carruthers
tucks a pistol into his tuxedo and tells his wife
that doing so is his proper function as a diplomat.
Britain's greatest victories are often preceded by
the sacrifice of good men to heathen treachery.
Valerie Hobson lets her husband walk away with a look
of quiet dignity: they both know that if he is
killed, her life will be forfeit as well. The
controlled emotions of their farewell capture the
essence of the British "stiff upper lip".
Just one year later, Sabu's acting is assured, as is
his command of English. The actor's intelligence
shines through his eyes; he's a genuine original. The
only scenes that come off as forced in
The
Drum occur when Azim makes fast friends with his
British counterpart, the cheerful drummer boy Bill
Holder. Azim's eagerness to someday don a British
uniform of his own seems a possible call for Indian
recruitment. Although his films were sometimes
controversial with Indian audiences, Sabu was
enormously popular in the country of his birth.
Leo Genn and Guy Rolfe are said to have uncredited
parts in
The Drum. Portly actor Francis L.
Sullivan (
Night and the City) has a plum role as the
local Governor, who won't act on Prince Azim's pleas
of calamity without corroboration from his own spies.
For most of the video era
Jungle Book has been
seen only in inferior transfers, with the result that
it is less well known than it deserves. With England
and India engulfed in the war, Korda's production of
The Thief of Bagdad was relocated to Hollywood
in mid-filming, and
Jungle Book followed suit.
It lacks the authentic feel of the other pictures,
yet is in keeping with the fantastic folk tales from
the Rudyard Kipling source book. The jungle is a
living thing that speaks to Kipling's young hero. The
animals remain loyal to their separate
species-tribes, yet speak with one another. They have
names like Shere Khan, Kaa, and Baloo the bear.
In an interesting touch, the story of
Jungle
Book is told by its villain, Buldeo the
shopkeeper (Joseph Calleia). A generation ago the
evil Tiger Shere Khan killed the husband of Messua
(Rosemary DeCamp). Her baby disappeared the same day
but did not perish; it was instead raised in the wild
by wolves. Lean, scarred and unable to speak the
human tongue, the feral Mowgli (Sabu) returns to his
loving mother but is rejected by the superstitious,
mean-spirited Buldeo. Mowgli soon learns to speak,
and acquires a "tooth" (a knife) to slay his mortal
enemy Shere Khan. Before he does he takes Buldeo's
sweet daughter Mahala (Patricia O'Rourke) on a
nighttime adventure to witness the magic of the
jungle, and view the secrets of a forgotten ancient
city. Mahala brings back a single gold coin from a
fantastic treasure room. The coin inspires her father
and his equally greedy friends the Barber and the
Pundit (John Qualen & Frank Puglia) to torture Mowgli
for the secret location. Mowgli calls on his friend
Bagheera the panther to frighten Buldeo away, but the
man only becomes convinced that Mowgli is a
shape-shifting witch. When Buldeo threatens to burn
Messua on a bonfire, Mowgli has no choice but to
allow the bandits to raid the treasure. He knows that
the evil riches within will cause the humans to
destroy each other.
Yet another masterful Korda production,
Jungle
Book creates miracles amid wartime shortages. The
independent show (released by United Artists) has
magnificent exterior sets enhanced and amplified by
elaborate matte paintings and other optical effects.
The entrance to the fabulous treasure room is through
a cracked dome, a design lifted intact for the 1974
Harryhausen film
<
I>The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. With the
exception of some puppet snakes and a mechanical
crocodile, the animals are all very alive and active.
The filmmakers appear to have used partially hidden
cameras, for in many scenes big cats prowl right up
to the lens, filling the screen in with curious
close-ups. This aspect of the film is very
successful.
Jungle Book has charm and humor to spare. No
longer the tiny little Elephant Boy, Sabu now has a
muscular, lean body that looks convincingly feral.
His adjustment to the human village takes amusing
turns. When Mowgli finds a bear rug on the floor of
Buldeo's house, he remarks, "It's you ... you went
missing several weeks ago!" The larger story takes a
refreshingly unsentimental attitude toward nature.
The great serpent Kaa says that he learned of Shere
Khan's whereabouts from a now-deceased jackal, and
points his nose to the lump in his body where the
animal is being digested. Mowgli knows very well that
the humans will betray one another when he leads them
to the treasure, just as Buldeo allows his friends to
kill each other in order to avoid direct
responsibility for their deaths. The movie ends on
the side of the jungle, when Mowgli proclaims that
corrupt humankind should be shunned. Mowgli surprises
us with his final choice.
Binding the film together, Miklós
Rózsa's masterful score expresses the wonder
and majesty of nature. The music soars when Mowgli
gives Mahala a grand tour of the wonders of his
jungle home, bringing the matte paintings and the
spray-painted palm leaves to life.
Jungle Book
is still a wondrous movie.
Eclipse's Series 30 DVD of
Sabu! is an
optimized but not restored set of transfers of movies
that are on the verge of slipping into obscurity,
despite their former fame. All three look much better
than the battered TV prints that circulated for
decades on end.
Elephant Boy is in the best
shape, in crisp B&W with clear audio.
The Drum
is the weakest, especially at the beginning, which
verges on the look of an older film-chain transfer.
Both of the Technicolor releases have been mastered
from composite negatives with occasional built-in
registration flaws. Viewers asking why the films have
not been fully rejuvenated, as has been done with
titles like
The Wizard of Oz need to
understand that those laborious photochemical-digital
restorations can cost millions of dollars. Few older
films have the earning potential to make such efforts
practical. Just the same,
Jungle Book is a
quantum improvement over an older laserdisc I once
saw, where the Technicolor image was rendered in a
high contrast that erased color values and plunged
any un-lit object into inky blackness. Aside from
some odd color values and an occasional
mis-registered shot, Eclipse's transfer looks very
good. Not having seen an original I.B. Tech print of
Jungle Book I cannot say if the color and
contrast values in the matte paintings are accurate.
Some of them look fairly artificial.
Eclipse discs normally have no special extras, but
Michael Koresky's liner notes are once again
informative and concise. We are told that
The
Drum played to a mixed reaction in India, where
many in the independence movement considered it an
insult.
For more information about
Eclipse Series 30:
Sabu, visit
The Criterion
Collection. To order
Eclipse Series 30:
Sabu, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
