Elephant Walk

Elizabeth Taylor, fresh from Chillingford-on-the-Thames, has just married Ceylonese tea planter Peter Finch and he's taken her back home. He's got quite a place over in what is now Sri Lanka, a 'bungalow' big enough to have a polo field. And that's exactly what they do there. He and his father's friends get on bicycles and play polo in the living room.

It's all tradition you know started by Finch's dad who is known to one and all as 'the Guv'nor.' He must have been something else, in everyone's memory he becomes almost a caricature of the colonial Briton.

The man must truly have been nuts or else he was one of those colonials who Noel Coward warned went out in the noon day sun a little too long. He built this palatial estate right on a well worn path that the elephants use to get to fresh water when the streams dry up in their neck of the woods. The local natives have to periodically ward them off with noise. They can't kill them because of the strict conservation laws and the Buddhist tradition.

Maybe I missed something here, but did he have to build the house right there? Does make for a spectacular climax though.

Peter Finch feels the need to keep traditions up and all the friends come over every week, get stinking drunk, and play bicycle polo in the living room. Not exactly the home Liz had in mind. She seeks some solace with overseer Dana Andrews who being American is not into all the colonial British traditions.

Elephant Walk, which is also the name of the Finch estate, has the advantage of some really beautiful cinematography in Sri Lanka. Lends an air of realism to a rather unreal plot.

Check out Abraham Sofaer who plays the major domo of Elephant Walk with the biggest handlebar mustache on record. One that Terry-Thomas would have envied.

Vivien Leigh was supposed to do Elephant Walk, but she bowed out do to health issues. That tuberculosis did flare up at the right time though.

... with Abraham Sofaer as a kinder gentler Mrs. Danvers.

John Wiley (Peter Finch), a Ceylon (Sri Lanka today) planter, is in London. While there he meets and marries a bookstore clerk, Ruth (Elizabeth Taylor) and brings her back to his estate - "Elephant Walk". But once home John begins to change. He seems haunted by the specter of his father, Tom Wiley, a harsh man who built Elephant Walk - named such because it is literally in the path of the historic elephant path to water. John drinks heavily, broods, and parties all night with a bunch of fellow planters, barking at Ruth if she complains. The supervisor of all the servants - Appuhamy - gets up every morning and talks to the grave of John's father, Tom, mentioning that he does not like Ruth, and that her ways are cold and distant. Appuhamy should know because he is cold and distant to Ruth, who only wants to take her place as running the household, but between Appuhamy, her distant husband, and the ghost of her father-in-law she is pretty much ganged up on. So let's also throw in that this movie is somewhat like "Giant " too in that regard.

But a ray of sunshine is the presence of an Elephant Walk foreman, Dick Carver (Dana Andrews) who falls in love with Ruth at first sight. Ruth wants her marriage to work, but between a foreman with bedroom eyes, a very haunted and brooding husband, epidemics and elephants, her path is a hard one. How will this work out? I'd say in a visually spectacular way for the time, yet utterly predictable.

Paramount certainly put energy into designing Liz' fashions. While they were at it they should have maybe put more money into shooting on location. There are shots that are clearly on location in Ceylon. But then they will intersperse those shots with those that are obviously on some Hollywood lot with back projection of the countryside. When Liz and Dana Andrews take a horseback ride through the plantation, the cheesiness of the back projection ventures into Ed Wood territory.

There is an interesting backstory to the making of this film. Apparently Vivien Leigh was originally supposed to have the part of Ruth, but illness prevented it. At age 40 she would have looked almost as odd as the fresh young bride as Liz would have looked in1939 as Scarlet O'Hara given she was seven at the time.

In spite of good performances by the entire cast, the sum of the thing is rather hokey and overwrought. Still, since all but the "tent pole" studio era films made by Paramount are hard to find, I'd say give it a look if it ever comes your way.

My parents took me to this movie when I was nine years old. I have never forgotten it. I had never before seen anything as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor. (She was twenty-two when she made Elephant Walk) Remember, I'm nine, so the feelings aren't sexual, I just couldn't see anything else on the screen. I just wanted to sit at her feet like a puppy and stare up at her. She has begun to show her age, (She's almost seventy-four) but I still believe her to be one of the most beautiful and breathtaking women to ever have lived.

I have seen the movie several times since, and it is a sappy melodrama. What saves it is, of course, Miss Taylor's beauty, magnificent scenery, the very impressive elephant stampede, and a well-made point on human arrogance in the face of nature.

All in all, a well-spent couple of hours watching the movie channel or a rented video.

Corny but fun film of the 50's. Except for her first scene in the bookstore, Liz Taylor looks gorgeous, especially outfitted as she is. Every curve and then some shows. A bit talky at first, but gains momentum as picture goes on. Lush scenery, although some process shots look...well like process. Peter Finch is good as the head of the tea plantation and is a bit ruthless at times. Good guy Dana Andrews shows up as a good romantic interest when needed. Whom will Liz end up with? The elephant stampede at the end is well worth the price of admission. By the way, the DVD transfer is great. Worth a look just to see the 50's style filming..No sex, violence, foul language. OK for the whole family.

ELEPHANT WALK may not be the acme of literature or of film, but it is great entertainment in the quasi-melodramatic mode. It is the story of love, both genuine and illicit, as well as overweening ambition, devotion, and the arrogance of personal tyranny. A previous reviewer, John Mankin, questions why the central focus of the film, the mansion called Elephant Walk, should have been built by the former owner, the "governor" the late Tom Wiley, right across the elephants' traditional path to the major source of water, the river. To miss this point is to essentially miss the point of the whole center of the film: the hubris of man. That his son, played by Peter Finch, should become enthralled by the super image and enigma of his revered father, is not unexpected, since the son was without a mother growing up in a foreign jungle with only his father and his father's rowdy 'boys' club' as his role models. The point of the father was that he was a self-made man who would tame nature to his liking, and that liking was not just a tea plantation upon the lands the elephants once dominated, but also that he would dominate even the large bull elephant that led the herd, and thus he would dominate his son and all around him, and so we join the tale after the elephants have been denied the crucial dry season access to their pathway to water. Who could know that this dry season would last so long and what the elephants would do in desperation to get water? This is the nexus of the film: what will animals do to get water; what will humans do to get power or love? Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka, is the huge island off the coast of India where the plantation is located and one quickly learns that it is the real scenery of the story, not just the expenses of Miss Taylor. Were it not for this exotic location (much of the film was shot in Ceylon), and the magnificent "bungalow" this would have been just another potboiler. One must recognize the atmosphere created here as integral to the time and place, as it illuminates the latter day wealth and power attained by the English immigrant 'conquerors' that were part and parcel of the British raj. It is only such wealth gained by the use of virtual slave labor that one could build so magnificent a residence of ebony, teak, and marble. Not to be overlooked are the wonderfully carved Jalees (grille work window and doorway borders) evidently specified by art directors J. McMillan Johnson and Hal Pereira and obviously made by the cheaper labor on the island. Such craftsmanship reveals the careful attention to detail that these men sought.

For those immune to the blandishments of time, place, and architecture, there is always the allure of Miss Taylor, as she marries a man she doesn't really know and is tacitly wooed by a another man, against the background described, and under the overarching tyranny of the legacy of a man deceased. As I said, it is not great literature nor even great film, but it is great spectacle long before that term was debased by the special effects extravaganzas of today.

This is one of those films made to be seen on the giant screen of an outdoor drive-in, not on the home TV, so arrange the largest screen to see it on to fully appreciate its fine camera-work and scope.