This is a fine movie. Not a great one by any means, but a very fine one.
It is remarkable mostly for a very fine script, which condenses Kipling's text by saving the most telling, essential moments, often using Kipling's dialog. When you have read the novel, you will marvel at how well it is done, and how faithful it is.
Therein, I suppose, lies its real weakness as well. The movie doesn't add a lot of its own to show what movies can do. Perhaps the best of what little there is comes in the last scene, where Heldar participates in the charge of the British forces against the natives in the Sudan. It is the sort of exciting charge that Hollywood used to do so well in a day when war was still glorious. The final touch, original to the movie, when Heldar's horse comes back to find him after he has been shot off it and killed, isn't very realistic - it's unlikely a horse that barely knew its rider would bother - but it makes a striking, if sentimental, last image.
My one problem with the movie is that it makes Maisie's standing as an artist in her own right even more ambiguous than Kipling does in the novel. In the novel she is as devoted to her art, if not more so, than Heldar, and for that reason refuses to give it up and marry him, which would mean becoming the mother of his children, etc. Kipling's novel suggests that she has the makings of an Impressionist painter, struggling for acceptance in an art world that still won't accept the triumph of color, a gift that she has, over line, which is what the art establishment prized. If, in fact, she is a good artist, her devotion to her art over everything would justify her refusal to give it up for Heldar. In the movie, unlike in the novel, Maisie dismisses her own work and we are left with the feeling she is, in fact, just being selfish, though why she should be so devoted to something that she herself does not esteem we never find out. In the movie Maisie becomes a less important character, so her motivations evidently don't matter.
Had the part been given to a better actress - Greer Garson would have been ideal - they might have given it more importance and more development, even though Garson was just starting her career in American films that year.
Coleman gives his usual wonderful performance, as does Walter Huston. Ida Lupino is also very good as the stereotypical cockney, the sort of role Angela Lansbery will do even better 5 years later in Gaslight, and win an Oscar for.
So, a movie to watch. You will appreciate some of its better points more if you read Kipling's novel first. And you will also enjoy Kipling's novel.
It is remarkable mostly for a very fine script, which condenses Kipling's text by saving the most telling, essential moments, often using Kipling's dialog. When you have read the novel, you will marvel at how well it is done, and how faithful it is.
Therein, I suppose, lies its real weakness as well. The movie doesn't add a lot of its own to show what movies can do. Perhaps the best of what little there is comes in the last scene, where Heldar participates in the charge of the British forces against the natives in the Sudan. It is the sort of exciting charge that Hollywood used to do so well in a day when war was still glorious. The final touch, original to the movie, when Heldar's horse comes back to find him after he has been shot off it and killed, isn't very realistic - it's unlikely a horse that barely knew its rider would bother - but it makes a striking, if sentimental, last image.
My one problem with the movie is that it makes Maisie's standing as an artist in her own right even more ambiguous than Kipling does in the novel. In the novel she is as devoted to her art, if not more so, than Heldar, and for that reason refuses to give it up and marry him, which would mean becoming the mother of his children, etc. Kipling's novel suggests that she has the makings of an Impressionist painter, struggling for acceptance in an art world that still won't accept the triumph of color, a gift that she has, over line, which is what the art establishment prized. If, in fact, she is a good artist, her devotion to her art over everything would justify her refusal to give it up for Heldar. In the movie, unlike in the novel, Maisie dismisses her own work and we are left with the feeling she is, in fact, just being selfish, though why she should be so devoted to something that she herself does not esteem we never find out. In the movie Maisie becomes a less important character, so her motivations evidently don't matter.
Had the part been given to a better actress - Greer Garson would have been ideal - they might have given it more importance and more development, even though Garson was just starting her career in American films that year.
Coleman gives his usual wonderful performance, as does Walter Huston. Ida Lupino is also very good as the stereotypical cockney, the sort of role Angela Lansbery will do even better 5 years later in Gaslight, and win an Oscar for.
So, a movie to watch. You will appreciate some of its better points more if you read Kipling's novel first. And you will also enjoy Kipling's novel.