User Reviews

TravelTalks visits the small British outpost in pre-war times. It's interesting to see these places during another era. It discusses the history of Singapore and shows its mainly Chinese inhabitants. In 1813, it was ceded by Jahore to the British. We even meet the present day Sultan of Jahore. One can see how the British ruled its vast empire with the cooperation of local leaders like him. One can see the colonial machine at work. That's the unintended underlying truth of this travelogue short and it's fascinating.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras to the south end of the Malay Peninsula, with Hone Glendinning turning the crank. Fitzpatrick rattles on with his usual assortment of random facts, like the rickshaw being invented by a Connecticutt missionary -- I lived in Danbury for a year in the 1980s, with no sign of of his work having been successful -- and admiration for the architecture and the reigning Sultan of Jahore,

Fitzpatrick never said anything actually bad about wherever his travelogues covered, although he might vaguely refer to some issue. still, he makes much of the cosmopolitan nature of both cities, and his approval of the Western-trained sentiments of the ruler.

As other reviewers have noted, this TravelTalks is one of Fitzpatrick's better efforts. But, as with many of his pre-war travelogues, one can't watch it without a feeling of poignancy and foreboding, knowing that war was just a few years away. Here, the Japanese invasion of Malaya just three years later would put an end to the idyllic scenes pictured by Fitzpatrick and replace them by a reign of terror.

Fitzpatrick also shows the Sultan of Jahore reviewing his army. One wonders how these gallant troops fared in the face of the Japanese invasion.

Still, an enjoyable and colorful look at an outpost of Britain's Far East empire before the war.

Singapore and Jahore (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another pleasant entry in MGM's TravelTalks series. We start off in Singapore where we learn that the name translates to "Lion Place" and that in 1819 Great Britain took it over. We learn that it's the busiest port in the world but there are also a lot of things that haven't changed over the past hundred years and this includes many jobs on the various lakes. We learn that there are half a million people living there and that the traffic police have "wings." In Jahore we basically see its sultan, known simply as "H.H." as he inspects his army. Fans of the series will find this one here to be better than your normal episode simply because we get so much history about the place and get to see many great visuals. The visuals really jump off the screen and the Technicolor doesn't hurt either. Fans of the series will certainly want to check this one out.