The Tiger of Eschnapur (Lang, 1959): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm
This film is part of the 'You Must Remember This presents: The Old Man is Still Alive' season at BFI Southbank. Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930 to ’50s,
radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme
that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This
and this BFI season. The men behind undeniable classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair
Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Gigi and Psycho, attempted – or were forced – to
engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards
race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences
who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a
world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some
railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s
phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo;
others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a
transformed society.
Full details of the season can be found here.
Chicago Reader review:
Fritz Lang’s penultimate work (1959)—a two-part adventure saga set and
partly shot in India—marked a return, in more ways than one, to his
masterpieces of the silent era. On a literal level, the project is a
remake of another diptych from 1921 that Lang developed with his former
wife, Thea von Harbou (who also wrote the novel on which the films are
based); but more importantly, it’s driven by powerful, architectural
mise en scene reminiscent of that of Metropolis and Spies.
The films take place in the fictional Indian kingdom of Eschnapur and
center on a German architect (Paul Haubschmid) who’s been hired by the
Maharajah (Walther Reyer) to construct schools and hospitals. The
architect falls in love with the Maharajah’s betrothed (Debra Paget), a
naive but passionate temple dancer, and their affair so enrages the
prince that he turns from benevolent to wrathful almost instantly. (His
transformation occurs near the end of The Tiger of Eschnapur, setting the stage for his brutal revenge in The Indian Tomb.)
As all this is going on, the ruler’s brother plots to usurp the throne,
and there are provocative conversations about the will of the gods that
reflect Lang’s career-long obsession with forces beyond human control.
This is a work of Orientalism that borders on camp—all the principal
Indian characters are played by Western actors, and the depiction of
India plays up the country’s exoticness—but as film historian Tom
Gunning has noted, it’s an Orientalist vision as personal and visually
inventive as Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, which was made only a
few years later. Lang’s handling of color, blocking, and suspense is
masterful throughout; if you’re at all interested in this major film
artist, you can’t miss this.
Ben Sachs
Here (and above) is the trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment