For quite awhile into this film, I felt encouraged by its seemingly faithful adherence to Twain's great novel. About halfway through, however, I began recalling scenes from the book I'd read for the first time only 6 months ago, suddenly realizing how much of Twain's imaginative masterpiece had been omitted, which was disappointing. The film's ending was completely different from the novel in an effort to give the film an overhurried, cinematically exciting finish. Despite such transgressions, the movie truly looks authentic in terms of time, place, & costumes. Without exception, the acting is uniformly good. My only real disappointment with the film is that the primary engine of the story, the river, is never specifically named, i.e. The Mississippi. While most assuredly not filmed on the great waterway, none of its magisterial width or awesome natural beauty is depicted. It could be any river anywhere. As a matter of fact, the story's setting, its historical geography, is rather hazy & described in questionably vague fashion. Regrettably, Huck & Jim's famous journey along the great liquid conduit writhing its way through the nation's midsection is treated quite mundanely. Likewise, the fugitives' raft isn't presented in its entirety, its physical dimensions & components unclear. The viewer never sees the most famous log conveyance in literary history from above or afar, its relation to the river's grandeur wholly non-depicted. True, as desperate travellers fleeing for their lives, Jim & Huck wouldn't've spent their time "oohing & ahhing" over, or commenting on, the wonders of the wavy world upon which they'd embarked but the filmmakers made no attempt to create this feeling in the viewer. Some steamboat interaction, however, was competently & acceptably done. Although the scenes with the King & the Duke are both amusing & faithful to the novel, for which one can be grateful, watching this segment comes off as a little too lengthy & ponderous when viewed onscreen, deadening the pace of an ongoing story. As mentioned, the finale is almost wholly unrecognizable, involving a movie-invented character who plays no part in the novel, though he's a likeable & important character. Sadly, too, perhaps, the film completely omits the arrival of Tom Sawyer on the scene, comprising several of the most amusing & enjoyable chapters of Twain's tale. Mickey Rooney, of course, is superb as loveable, pipe-smoking, shoes-hating, school-avoiding rapscallion Huck, though a few years too old to be wholly in sync with Twain's immortal character. Rex Ingram is unforgettable as Jim, capturing the freedom-questing slave's humanity most sympathetically & movingly. The movie's well-made, atmospheric, & quite entertaining---an appreciated attempt at capturing the essence of Twain's timeless triumph, though only half-succeeding. The other half should've been the capturing of the sheer poetry of the thrilling, epochal, life-changing journey taken long-ago, when the nation yet was young, so many of its dreams, and, yes, flaws, hidden-away in the still-unknown future. The story of impartial, endlessly-flowing Ol' Man River, one that played such a huge role in our country's development---and 2 characters immortalized by Mr. Clemens in what was far-more than a mere adventure story. This 1939 movie-version is, & will remain, a good but forgotten cinematic artifact, while the original novel will just keep rollin' along.
