Gunga Din

Gunga Din (1939) is one of Hollywood's classic adventure films. Even in a year that saw Beau Geste and The Four Feathers, Gunga Din manages to stand out for sheer enjoyability.

In 1880s India, the fanatical Guru (Eduardo Cianelli) leads an uprising of the Thugs, a murderous strangler cult bent on wiping out the Raj. This matters little to a trio of rowdy British Sergeants: treasure-seeking Cutter (Cary Grant), elephant-loving MacChesney (Victor McLaglen) and dashing Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). They're more concerned with Ballantine's impending marriage to Emmy (Joan Fontaine), daughter of a tea executive, and do everything they can to sabotage his plans. In search of a hoard of Indian gold, Cutter stumbles across a Hindu temple where the Guru is organizing his followers for an all-out attack. Ultimately it's up to Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe), a bhishti water-bearer who desperately wants to be a soldier, to save the day.

Gunga Din is pure fun from beginning to end, a silly boy's adventure film with no pretension of seriousness. Writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur reprise The Front Page's scenario of male professionals shunning female interference, with Ballantine proclaiming "I'm a man first!" to his befuddled fiancee. They might as well hang a "no girls allowed" sign outside the barracks. They're the cool kids on the playground, nice enough to let Gunga Din tag along but sticking it to dorky Sergeant Higgenbottom (Robert Coote). Unlike Beau Geste, there's no mawkish sentiment about the purity of brotherly love: our protagonists have no qualms about backstabbing, pranking and mocking one another when appropriate.

This fits in perfectly with the depiction of war as a fun game ("How can we get a nice little war going?") and the cartoonishly evil Thugs. The threat posed by the Thugs is deadly serious, but our heroes refuse to bow to its gravity. Fighting their way out of an ambush, the sergeants use pistols, pickaxes and dynamite with equal aplomb; at one point, Ballantine flattens a dozen Thugs with a single punch! My favorite scene has Cutter calmly striding into a Thug gathering as a "diversion" for Din. The film's dated elements are easy to overlook because it takes nothing at all seriously.

Ace director George Stevens (Shane) is at the top of his game, delivering an explosive thrill ride. The action scenes are exciting and impressive in staging, especially the expertly-choreographed finale. The film moves has a breakneck pace, mixing action with well-timed comedy sequences. Only a regimental ball in the mid-section goes on a bit long, though it has a funny payoff.

Perhaps Gunga Din's strongest vindication is its influence on later generations of action films: Kelly's Heroes and Three Kings lifted the treasure-hunting plot, while Steven Spielberg cavalierly grafted the Thugee elements onto his Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The Man Who Would Be King (also based on Rudyard Kipling) presented a more cynical take on the story, its duo of cocky Tommies carving out their own private empire in Central Asia. More generally, Stevens's mixture of exciting action and unflappable heroes remains a cornerstone of the genre.

Cary Grant, nearing the height of his stardom, gives the role his trademark mixture of effortless charm and humor. Victor McLaglen (The Informer) was never better and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is appropriately dashing as the nominal straight man. The trio have great chemistry, giving the adventure a childish glee that's impossible to resist.

Sam Jaffe's amusing performance provides the emotional center. Jaffe portrays Din as a comic foil until the finale, where he becomes an unlikely hero, invested with dignity and pathos. If Cutter and Co. like him, he must be a swell guy. Joan Fontaine's (Rebecca) love interest is a throwaway role. Eduardo Cianelli (The Chase) makes a fearsome villain, an evil genius who incites his bloodthirsty followers to "Kill! Kill! KILL!!!" Abner Biberman (His Girl Friday), Montagu Love (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Robert Coote (The Horse's Mouth) essay other roles.

Gunga Din is one of Hollywood's most purely entertaining adventures. Some elements mark it as a product of 1939, but its mixture of action, charm and irreverence remains irresistible.

Shane

George Stevens's Shane (1953) is perhaps the purest cinematic distillation of the Western myth. Perfectly crafted, rich in story and character, full of fine performances and beautiful photography, it embodies everything expected of a Hollywood Western, resulting in a masterful film.

A mysterious stranger with a past (Alan Ladd) shows up on the homestead of small farmer Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) and his family (Jean Arthur, Brandon De Wilde). Agreeing to work for Starrett, Shane finds himself in the middle of a range war, with cattle baron Ryker (Emile Meyer) using his thugs to evict Starrett and other homesteaders from "his" property. Things come to a head when Ryker hires Wilson (Jack Palance), an infamous gunslinger, to clean house, and Shane must decide whether or not to strap on his gun belt.

This adaptation of Jack Schaefer's novel hits all the expected genre notes: the mysterious gunslinger trying to retire; a ruthless cattle baron and his thugs; the black-hatted villain; homesteaders trying to build a new society. All that's missing are Indians.

Shane is anything but pedestrian, however. Belying the simplicity of its story, it's a richly textured and powerful film. Roger Ebert tries to argue that the film is more complex than it seems at a glance, but this is misleading. Thematically, the film is very simple, an archetypal story of frontier progress, of clearly-delineated god guys and bad guys. Its depth lies elsewhere.

Indeed, this precisely why Shane works. It uses these mythological elements to craft a grand and powerful story. Shane is the noblest hero imaginable: despite his checkered past, he finds himself inexorably driven to his fate, like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy. Joe is courageous and well-meaning, but it's Shane who must smite Ryker and his minions. The homesteader's community is a model of hard-work, optimism and solidarity that John Ford would envy, working to build a better America. The repeated use of animals - Shane appearing through a deer's antlers, the dog terrified of Wilson, the hellish cacophony of livestock as Shane and Joe fight - stresses the story's elemental nature. The focus on Joey (De Wilde) is the capper: we're in the Old West of dime novels and B-Westerns, a place of Progress and Good and Evil.

Perhaps due to its literary roots, Shane is much more formal than most Westerns. There's a lot of dialogue, but it's well-written and performed, and the film never drags. A.B. Guthrie's script is perfectly structured, events building with ease and precision. The characters range from one-dimensional to well-rounded; the homesteaders are a diverse bunch, and even Ryker gets a chance to make his case. It's definitely a thinking man's Western, its intelligence channeled into plot and character rather than "themes."

Stevens' direction is excellent, making beautiful use of the Wyoming scenery and Loyal Grigg's striking Technicolor photography. The movie is packed with brilliant scenes, including an epic bar room brawl, Shane and Wilson first sizing each other up, Wilson's shooting of the hapless Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.), an emotional funeral and an intense shootout. The movie's sets and costumes are wonderfully authentic, showing that a Western can be authentic without resorting to "revisionist" pessimism and gloom. Victor Young's loud score is merely okay.

Alan Ladd is nearly-perfect as Shane, making him convincingly righteous and believably conflicted. Van Heflin (3:10 to Yuma) is a dependably righteous and heroic Everyman. "Walter" Jack Palance is chilling as the near-silent, snake-like Wilson, one of the great Western villains. Fine supporting actors include Emile Meyer (Paths of Glory), Elisha Cook Jr. (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), Edgar Buchanan (Ride the High Country) and Ben Johnson (The Wild Bunch). The two weak links are Jean Arthur - fine for most of the length, but turning into a whining shrew towards the end - and Brandon De Wilde, who epitomizes the obnoxiously-"cute" Hollywood kid.


Shane is one of the all-time great Westerns. By embodying everything essential to the Western genre, it becomes a powerful, indispensable piece of mythology.