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Epic Movie the Second Time Around

5/5/2015

4 Comments

 
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How much of the experience of a great movie is where you watch that movie? “I can’t write another post on The Man Who Would Be King," I told myself this morning. (See  July 30, 2014).  Oh yes you can!  Because last night, for only the second time in my life, I watched the John Huston movie, and discovered something buried in that movie, last watched in 1976. Movies can be time-bombs. From its bizarre opening scenes in an Indian marketplace — that include, among so many things, a man eating scorpions — the movie/Kipling story carried me from our bedroom and flat-screen TV, to a dusty velvet seat on the left lip of the St. George Theatre’s balcony. 

During the fateful and loaded year when we ran the St. George, King was the first of only a handful of films I would watch from beginning to end, not getting up to check the concession stand or go back to my office and juggle the books. For the duration of the movie, I was transfixed. 

It may have been filmed in Morocco, but I was up to my knees in snow, gazing while two soldiers of fortune (Michael Caine and Sean Connery) make their improbable trek through the Himalayas. En route to a mythical kingdom unseen by Western eyes since Alexander the Great conquered it in 328 B.C., Peachy and Danny are pickpockets, confidence men mustered out of the British Army, looking for gold. Gold is what Peachy (Caine) wants, but Danny actually hopes to be a king somewhere in those mountains beyond Tibet.

A king! I see it all now.  I wasn’t escaping, but identifying! How much more ridiculous than being a king in a mythical kingdom was our plan, impoverished as we were — to refurbish and run at a profit a 2672-seat movie palace? Pick-pockets? Not quite yet. Soldiers of fortune?  Absolutely. 

In the movie, they make it to Kafiristan, train a small army and, thanks to a lucky coincidence having to do with some jewelry Connery is wearing, inherit the kingdom of Alexander the Great.

It was luck that got them over the pass in the mountains, and luck that got us in the front door of that theater. Yes we did train a small army — of cashiers, ushers and concessionaires, and, for a time we wore the crowns of entrepreneurs. We never did build a rope-bridge back to our normal lives (which is to say we never had an exit plan every good soldier of fortune should have). (In case you somehow haven’t watched this exquisite movie, I will only say the rope bridge and what happens there is worth the whole film). 

The Man Who Would Be King is a brilliant movie; Huston had waited several decades to make it, almost casting Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable (but Bogie died, and Gable followed him shortly after that). Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas almost moved into the roles, almost followed by Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton.  Of the three, only the last pair intrigues me.

Regardless of what it meant and means to me, this movie was undoubtedly a terrible choice for our (mostly poor, racially diverse) audiences, a cynical tale about the corruption inherent in armies of occupation (the British Raj certainly was that and a lot else — as when Peachy throws an Indian man carelessly out the door of a moving train, ostensibly for littering the floor with watermelon seeds). Who could like these guys?  (Ah, but you can still identify with them!).

The movie sold hardly any tickets. What were we thinking?  How can I not have known from that day forward we were doomed on our own private trek?  Why has it taken almost forty years to discover the misplaced adventurer in myself? However, it was almost worth personal bankruptcy, to see it in a real movie palace.

A tip of the hat to Matt Lambros on whose marvelous website, After the Final Curtain, I found this excellent quote: "People buy tickets to theatres, not movies." — Marcus Loew


4 Comments
Beth link
5/6/2015 08:24:01 am

A gentle reflection on the magic of your movie palace & that mad, quirky movie. What do you suppose is the basis for the timeless appeal of a film like "Casablanca" & its broad audience? Can't be just romance. Bromance?

Reply
v.h.
5/6/2015 05:10:42 pm

Ah, Casablanca. Another soldier of fortune! That one played by Bogart who very nearly got the role in Man Who Would Be King...odd coincidence!

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Clifford Browder link
5/7/2015 10:47:59 am

I grew up on British movies of the 1930s -- yes, way back then -- that glorified the Empire and those who fought for it. I never thought about the native peoples and their point of view, but those movies didn't want you to. It wasn't about politics; I and boys like me just wanted to be immersed in an exotic world with lots of adventure, casts of thousands, etc., and the "good guys" always win. Your movie is of a later date, obviously, and more critical. But those old movies -- often Technicolor epics by Alexander Korda -- were fun. But they wouldn't fly today.

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v.h.
5/7/2015 02:29:43 pm

Well, in its odd way The Man Who Could Be King does at least tip its hat to Empire--but it has an ironic tone. I wonder what kind of film it would have been if cast in the 1950's, with Bogart and Gable, or even Douglas and Lancaster--as originally planned? It might have been more like the Alexander Korda movies you mention. By the time it was made, the Zeitgeist had changed, which put a darker tone on Kipling--who was, after all, hardly a mensch!

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    Victoria Hallerman

    Author

    Victoria Hallerman is a poet and writer, the author of the upcoming memoir, Starts Wednesday: A Day in the Life of a Movie Palace, based on her experience as a movie palace manager of the St. George Theatre, Staten Island, 1976. As she prepares her book manuscript for publication, she shares early aspects of theater management, including the pleasures and pain of entrepreneurship. This blog is for anyone who enjoys old movie theaters, especially for those who love the palaces as they once were. And a salute to those passionate activists who continue to save and revive the old houses, including the St. George Theatre itself. This blog is updated every Wednesday, the day film always arrived to start the movie theater week.

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