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Jungle Book (1942)

For a few years in the early 1940s, a young actor of Indian descent was a household name among American moviegoers. His name was Sabu Dastagir (better known as simply “Sabu”), and he debuted in Robert Flaherty’s The Elephant Boy (1937). Sabu’s performance in The Elephant Boy was enough to convince Hungarian-British producer Alexander Korda to have the young Indian actor star in the 1940 remake of The Thief of Bagdad and, two years later, Jungle Book. Sabu did find film work after his two most iconic motion pictures, but these opportunities proved harder to find in the United States than in Britain. Almost eighty years later, Sabu remains only one of a handful of actors of South Asian descent to achieve even the briefest Hollywood stardom.

As an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, this is a Korda brothers’ production – eldest brother Alexander produces, middle brother Zoltan directs, and youngest brother Vincent is the art director. Many readers’ point of reference to Kipling’s work is most likely Disney’s animated musical from 1967. Compared to the Disney animated feature, the Korda Jungle Book, distributed by United Artists, is more interested in Mowgli’s interactions with humans, rather than the animals of the jungle. In a time when Technicolor was still relatively new, this Jungle Book contains some of the best use of color in an early 1940s movie. Beyond than the eye-catching palette and then-innovative visual effects, this Jungle Book loses its way anytime Sabu or the wildlife are not on-screen. The original source material, a reflection of Kipling’s imperialist and racist attitudes, also transfers some of those values to this screen adaptation (not related to the plot but in a similarly concerning development, Sabu is the only actor of South Asian descent in a cast almost entirely donning brownface).

In the prologue, an elderly Indian man named Buldeo (Joseph Calleia) regales his fellow villagers and anyone else in the area with tales of the past. When a British woman stop to listen, Buldeo begins the story of Mowgli and how the young boy, raised by wolves and a product of the jungle, came to reintegrate into human society. Unlike Disney’s two Jungle Book adaptations, the Korda Jungle Book cares more for Mowgli’s relationships with humans as opposed to that of the jungle animals. The tiger Shere Khan and the snake Kaa (voiced acted by Mel Blanc) garner plenty of screentime in the film’s closing scenes. But fans of Mowgli’s closest friends – the bear Baloo and the black panther Bagheera – might be disappointed, as they only have glorified cameos. In place of this focus on animals, this film spends ample time on Mowgli’s developing relationships with his mother Messua (Rosemary DeCamp), Buldeo, and Buldeo’s daughter Mahala (Patricia O’Rourke).

The exotified rural India that appears in Jungle Book overshadows most everything about this adaptation, including Sabu’s starring role. That Zoltan Korda, United Artists, and London Films felt no need to cast any other actors of South Asian descent for Jungle Book exemplifies the casual racism that permeates the narrative. The all-white cast playing noble half-savages or passive women is off-putting, fracturing one’s ability to feel as if the events on-screen are not taking place somewhere in sunny Southern California.

Jungle Book’s Indian setting came together at Lake Sherwood near Thousand Oaks, California and what is now known as Sunset Las Palmas Studios in Hollywood, which was then (and still remains) an independent production lot that hosts shoots for various television and cinematic works. Flown onto the sets were hundreds of fauna rented from local farms and zoos and tons of foliage (natural and synthetic), making the jungle scenes – despite the noticeable background or matte painting at times – feel vast and enclosing. And even though it is difficult to distinguish which scenes were shot indoors or outdoors, the amount of water, however improbably still it is in some parts, appearing in the film assists in immersing the audience into this dense environment. For all of the human settlements – in ruins or otherwise – production designers Vincent Korda and Julia Heron (1943’s Hangmen Also Die!, set decorator on 1960’s Spartacus) are not appealing to any sense of cultural understanding appropriateness. Yet the scope of their village and abandoned temple sets are tremendous, with an assist from the incredible matte paintings.

Cinematographers Lee Garmes (1933’s Shanghai Express, 1944’s Since You Went Away) and W. Howard Greene (1937’s A Star is Born, 1951’s When Worlds Collide) use of highly-saturated Technicolor features eye-catching images perfect for this unrealistic reality. Even in the darkest parts of the jungle, the explosion of emerald greens, cool blues, and other earthy colors feels anything but mute, a fantastical version of a rainforest brought to life. The jungle, despite the obvious artificialities in some of the foliage and fauna, almost becomes a character in the Korda Jungle Book. Other artificialities are a shade more convincing, most notably some of the effects required to capture animal movements. Using footage of both mechanical and actual animals alike, Garmes and Greene do their best to hide some strings and wires pulling along stunning mechanical snakes or to allow Bagheera and Shere Khan’s animal actors appear as if they are interacting with the events in the film. For the most dangerous animals that this production features, the black panther and tiger that played Bagheera and Shere Khan, respectively, were separated from the cameras by a glass barrier. This is immaculate visual effects footage, perhaps the film’s saving grace.

Contrast this with Laurence Stallings’ (1925’s The Big Parade, 1949’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon) clunker of a screenplay. An inordinate amount of the dialogue is expository and declarative, and too many supporting characters speak in formalities with nary a shred of humor. Jungle Book’s narrative thus feels too formulaic, uptight, and unimaginative. When anyone other than Mowgli or the animals are on-screen, the film is a slog. Kipling’s literary influence on the film might not be apparent in how the humans speak, but it certainly comes through in the most perilous sequences in this movie – and that includes a scene of a forest fire that has to raise questions about animal endangerment on-set at a time with almost no laws against animal mistreatment on film shoots. The Kordas’ Jungle Book works best if seen as an extravagant picture book, but one wishes for Sabu, in a decent performance chockfull of glee, to talk a tad more to the animals.

Hungarian-American composer Miklós Rózsa (1940’s The Thief of Bagdad, 1959’s Ben-Hur) scores perhaps his best body of work owing to elements outside Western classical music. Rózsa’s score to Jungle Book is bolstered by the composer’s detailed research into Hindu music’s chord progressions and modes. His compositions and the orchestration come as close as possible to capturing the harmonic developments of Hindu music as one can while using a Western orchestra. Thus, one can imagine that the music for Jungle Book might be difficult for Indian and non-Indian audiences to appreciate. But as a harmonically complex take on Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle and among humans, this is a bold sound – occupying a space between the melodic demands and orchestration of the West and the wide-ranging tempo and virtuosic harmonic swirls found in classical Hindu music.

The closest analogue to the Kordas’ Jungle Book in this era of Hollywood history must have been the Tarzan series (1932-1948) starring Johnny Weissmuller as the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. That, however, is a fraught comparison to make. The Weissmuller Tarzan films were modestly-budgeted and its numerous sequels relied on increasingly laughable contrivances. The Kordas’ Jungle Book is an expensive motion picture leaning on its special effects wizardry while its narrative scarcely makes much of an impression. The premise of Weissmuller and Sabu’s legacies are upon a particular set of roles. By choice, Weissmuller took the roles of jungle-dwelling strongmen. The major Hollywood studios typecasted Sabu – against his wishes – as the urchin, usually a jungle-dweller, from an exotic Asian locale.

This Jungle Book is, for an older generation, a foundational film of their childhood (although I reject any attempts to label this as a children’s film) and an unmitigated technical achievement. In numerous ways, it is also a prime example of how Hollywood viewed Asian influences and actors of Asian descent for decades to come.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.