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gerdeen
Reviews
Tarzan and the Amazons (1945)
Is it just me or is this the only Marxist Tarzan film?
The politics of this movie struck me like a thunderbolt a few years ago. Even as a child, I had found something odd about it. But finally I realized as a middle-aged man what was wrong: The empire of the Amazons is a xenophobic, brutal, collectivist dictatorship.
It's not at all like the gentle lost civilizations in other Tarzan movies. It's a robotic workers' paradise, a Stalinist mini-state plopped down in the primeval heart of Africa. It's the kind of place Tarzan normally would hate, but he is its staunch ally. He practically grovels. And the villains are greedy men obsessed with gold. They're not saints, certainly, but are they any worse than the people Tarzan throws in with? And to cap it all off, the high priestess is played by the most famous Russian actress in America at the time, Maria Ouspenskaya.
I can't cite all the evidence without spoilers, but just look at this movie for yourself. They are everywhere.
What's up here? Consider the timing. This movie was made in 1945, the last year of World War II, the apex of U.S.-Soviet cooperation. American movies were celebrating the Soviet system, with the active encouragement of the U.S. government. All this would change soon, but in 1945, Josef Stalin was a hero in Hollywood.
Are the Amazons the Soviets? Are the gold-seekers the forces of capitalism? I think so. With the kind of strong left-wing views permeating Hollywood at the time, it wouldn't be so ridiculous to have a Red screenplay in the jungle.
This doesn't alarm me, and it probably sailed over most viewers' heads. (Nothing like pretty girls to take your mind off politics.) But I find it a very cogent theory, and I'm certain I wasn't the first person to think of it.
Please don't write me off as a kook. Look and see.
Top Secret Affair (1957)
A disappointment for a Marquand fan
This was inspired by John P. Marquand's 1951 novel "Melville Goodwin: USA." The book was about an Army general's affair with a prominent woman, and it was one of Marquand's most entertaining. Unfortunately, the movie retains almost nothing of the original story except for the names of the two romantic leads. In the book, the general is already married, and making him a bachelor in the movie simply changes everything. The movie even eliminates the narrator of the book, who supplied much of its humor. Readers of the book can watch the movie with no sense of what will happen next. The two are that different, and the movie is undeniably inferior.