JUNGLE BOOK
(Korda-United Artists)
T is a measure of the film industry’s. frequent claim to produce entertainment in tune with the times that its pictures
about india have, aimost without exception, been confined to 19th century Kiplingesque Epics of the Frontier and animal fantasies in the Elephant Boy-Jungle Book style. The only such film with any pretence to modernity that I can remember was The Rains Came, and that dealt so largely with princes and pukka sahibs (and slightly less pukka memsahibs) that the real people of the country hardly got a look in. Clark Gable and Rosalind Russell certainly met in Bombay, but they didn’t stay long (thank. heavens!). The reason for this reticence is, I suppose, semi-political. I mean, even supposing you could discover it, you couldn’t present the objective truth about the Real India (the India of Ghandi, Congress, the Muslim League, the ILC.S., and particularly the peasants), ‘without risking offence to all parties. So Hollywood plays safe and sticks ‘to Kipling. For instance, take Kipling’s Jungle Book-but don’t take it too seriously, and you'd better not take the original Kipling out of your shelves for comparison. The film bears about as much resemblance to the real India as the Taj Mahal does. Still, that is a fact for comment rather than criticism, since the book didn’t bear much _ resemblance either, if it comes to that, and didn’t need to, being a fairy-tale; but when Kipling’s well-beloved fable is pushed through the movie-cameras most of the illusion and charm is squeezed out. If you are content with some beautiful, very-Technicolored animal photography, the lithe grace of Sabu, the Hindu star (he’s a big boy now), and extravagant settings and fantasy in the Arabian Nights manner, you may enjoy your-self-and anyway the children probably will. But if you have fond memories of the myth about Mowgli the wolf-boy surviving from your youth, you will) just as likely suffer a bad attack of spleen and wish that the three Brothers Korda might suffer the same fate as the three wicked Indians who are driven to selfdestruction by lust for the fabulous treasures in Mowgli’s lost city. Technically, of course, the film is an astonishing achievement, with wolves, tigers, jackals, elephants, and reptiles consorting (and sometimes conversing)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19430115.2.35.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 186, 15 January 1943, Page 17
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377JUNGLE BOOK New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 186, 15 January 1943, Page 17
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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