Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

Times change. Today’s Hollywood is insufferably “woke” and “politically correct”, but in the past it often went to the other extreme, creating films that could be viewed if not as overtly racist, then at least as patronising and insensitive towards various ethnic and religious minorities. That includes even some of the most popular and influential works of Classic Hollywood, like Gunga Din, the 1939 period adventure film directed by George Stevens, which is today considered one of the classics of the genre.

The film is very loosely based on the eponymous poem by British author Rudyard Kipling. The plot is set in 1880s India, at a time when the country was under the rule of the British Empire. Despite the title, the protagonists are three sergeants of the British Army – the adventurous Archibald Cutter (played by Cary Grant), the tough, no-nonsense “Mac” MacChesney (played by Victor McLaglen) and Thomas “Tommy” Ballantine (played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), who is the most level-headed among them despite sharing his friends’ distaste for strict discipline. The trio is about to be torn apart because Ballantine has decided not to renew his contract and instead begin a quiet civilian life with his fiancée Emmaline “Emmy” Stebbins (played by Joan Fontaine). Before that happens, he is going to take part in what begins as a seemingly routine investigation of severed telegraph lines and later turns into a struggle against the Thuggees, murderous worshippers of the Hindu goddess Kali, whose leader (played by Eduardo Cianelli) dreams of kicking the British out of India. When Cutter, in his misguided attempt to enrich himself with gold from a hidden Hindu temple, finds the Thuggee headquarters, he gets captured, so his two friends try to rescue him only to get captured themselves. The person to actually save the day is their loyal Indian water carrier Gunga Din (played by Sam Jaffe), who always dreamed of becoming a soldier in the British Army.

Made with a large budget, Gunga Din displays the technical know-how of Classic Hollywood in its full glory (with the possible exception of colour cinematography, which was slowly becoming the norm for such films but was still too expensive and complicated for RKO Pictures). The direction of George Stevens, who replaced the adventure genre specialist Howard Hawks, is more than competent and, despite a relatively slow start, the film’s plot advances very neatly with the tone shifting from light-hearted comedy at the beginning towards more serious drama near the end, which also features a spectacular battle scene involving hundreds of extras, dozens of horses and four elephants. The California locations are, with the help of production and costume design, put to excellent use, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. later had to explain to actual Indians that Gunga Din wasn’t made on real locations. The diverse cast is very good, especially the actors playing the three main roles, although Cary Grant at times allows his authentic Cockney accent to come and go.

Casting is, however, also one of the problems with this film, at least when viewed from today’s perspective. The title character of Gunga Din is Indian, but he is played by the white actor Sam Jaffe in what could be described as “blackface”. The same goes for the main villain, who is played in “blackface” by the Italian actor Eduardo Cianelli. The film anachronistically places the Thuggees in 1880s India, half a century after the real-life cult was eradicated during the process reconstructed in the more historically accurate 1988 film The Deceivers. They are portrayed as evil, murderous fanatics, while at the same time their goal is Indian independence, which consequently makes the British, who were still ruling India at the time of production, a force for good. Indians apparently didn’t like a film in which their freedom fighters were portrayed negatively and a character who would be considered a traitor was celebrated as a hero. The film caused riots in (still British) India and Malaya and had to be banned. The rest of the world, however, cared little about such controversies, and Gunga Din was extremely successful at the box office (although RKO had to wait before going into the black because of the extremely high budget).

Gunga Din proved to be not only popular but also an influential film. In 1962, John Sturges directed a remake in the form of a western called Sergeants 3, but the film’s influence is even more direct in the case of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which borrows many elements of plot and iconography. Those viewers who can allow themselves to watch Gunga Din outside its political context are likely to appreciate it as an old-fashioned but still entertaining piece of adventure action cinema.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)