The New Pictures

Gunga Din (RKO Radio), most expensive picture in the history of RKO, which was last week on the point of emerging from a six-year bankruptcy, unfolds a jolly story about high jinks on India's frontier. Poor old Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) has small part in the proceedings. In the first part of the picture he wobbles about carrying a goatskin water bag. In the last part, he inspires a scared-looking Rudyard Kipling to produce a commemorative poem. The rest of the time Gunga Din's doings are eclipsed by those of three agile young sergeants--Gary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The story of Gunga Din, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and made into a screen play by Joel Sayre and Fred Guiol, appears to be a sort of Anglo-Indian Three Musketeers. What plot there is concerns the efforts of two sergeants to persuade the third to re-enlist when his period of service expires. This entails much hand-to-hand fighting against a band of Thugs, a few barrack-room practical jokes and frequent athletic tricks of the sort popularized by Master Fairbanks' father. Funny, spectacular, and exciting, Gunga Din reaches its climax when the liveliest sergeant (Grant) gets trapped by Thug Guru (Eduardo Ciannelli) and is almost thrown into a pit full of hungry cobras. Typical sequence: battle between a regiment of Scots Highlanders and Thug cavalry, filmed on the slopes of Mt. Whitney last summer, with a cast of 900 extras.

As an individual product of the cinema industry, there is practically nothing to be said against Gunga Din. First-class entertainment, it will neither corrupt the morals of minors nor affront the intelligence of their seniors. But unfortunately, Gunga Din is not an isolated example of the cinema industry's majestic mass product. It is a symbol of Hollywood's current trend. As such it is as deplorable as it is enlightening.

Up to 1938, the cinema industry was occupied with an erratic progression from its beginning in nickelodeons to its last phenomenon, screwball comedies. In 1938 the industry stopped going forward, began going backward. The retrogression took three forms: 1) a series of revivals of old pictures, from The Sheik to Dracula; 2) a series of remakes, from If I Were King to The Adventures of Robin Hood; 3) a series of disguised remakes and delayed sequels like Going Places, The Chaser, Tarzan's Revenge.

In 1938, a producer in England persuaded Bernard Shaw to sell picture rights to his plays. French producers have lately turned out genuinely original products like Le Roman d'un Tricheur and Grand Illusion. Hollywood, however, even when it was not deliberately repeating itself, repeated itself unconsciously. Gunga Din is an example of this unconscious repetition. Whatever there is to be said about the minor matter of barrack-room life in India has been more than sufficiently said by the cinema many times, most recently in Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Charge of the Light Brigade and Drums.

Moving pictures are a vigorous entertainment medium. There has probably never been a moment in the world's history when more exciting things were going on than in 1939. That Hollywood can supply no better salute to 1939 than a $2,000,000 rehash, however expert, of Rudyard Kipling and brown Indians in bed sheets, is a sad reflection on its state of mind.

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