Jungle Book (1942)

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1. 

   dombrewer

   Zoltan Korda's version of Kipling's classic stories sadly fell short of my expectations - partly because the source material is very loosely adhered to, and partly because the high production values come at the cost of decent character development and a compelling script. The first half of the film concerns the story of Mowgli and his revenge on his nemesis - the tiger Shere Khan - but after that the tension sags drastically as semi-comic trio of greedy villagers attempt to loot the treasure of a fabled lost city and destroy each other in the process, and then most of the jungle.
   
   Sabu, a wonderful find for Hollywood in the 40s and brilliant in "The Thief of Bagdad" two years before is also good here, perfectly cast as the boy raised by wolves (but strangely civilised and fluent in English in no time at all upon returning to his village). It's unfortunate that the rest of the cast, inevitably, are hammy character actors in blackface - none can match the raw charisma or vibrancy of Sabu in the central role. The animal "performances" are varied, some are trained animals like Shere Khan the tiger, Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther, some clumsily manipulated models like Kaa the snake and a large, very clunky crocodile. The special effects on the whole are primitive, but the sets are brilliant, particularly the hidden city which meets a spectacularly fiery end at the film's climax. All in all a very mixed bag, but ultimately falls short of Korda's other adventure films of the era, as well as the charm and drama of the Disney adaptation. 10 years 11 months ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   1942's adaptation of the Jungle Book has a lot more people in it than any other version I can remember. Taking its cue mostly from two of Kipling's humano-centric stories - Tiger! Tiger! and The King's Ankus - it largely skips over Mowgli's time with an all-animal cast (Baloo is very much the loser here) to get Mowgli to a human village, where he learns to speak, romances a girl (sort of), and frowns at men's capacity for greed and violence. That may be one of the only ways to make this picture in the 40s. There are some good animal scenes set in colorful environments, the nature-style footage edited to create the animals' personalities, but there's also real interaction with humans there. On the whole, it looks gorgeous and has some charm. Unfortunately, taking that angle opens the door to a whole lot of black face, with white people playing Indians. So it's a good thing Sabu plays the famous man-cub, or else it would be wall-to-wall problematic. 5 years 2 months ago
3. 

   ClassicLady

   Fantastic color and scenery! The story was sort of wasted on me, though. 11 years 1 month ago

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