She

I have very happy memories of this movie, which I finally saw in a revival house in New York City in the early Nineties, after many years of its unavailability due to the Hammer remake. This much more idiosyncratic version from the Thirties owes a lot of its atmosphere and stylish elan to the extraordinary Bauhaus-inspired sets, the Max Steiner score, and Helen Gahagan's majestically mannered performance as She Who MUST Be Obeyed. It's a film very much of its time yet there is also a timeless, haunting quality to certain sequences. It has very little to do with Rider Haggard's novel (which is a great favorite of mine) but once I realized this was going to be a different story altogether I didn't care.

The theatre that showed this was packed for a mid afternoon screening, and the audience reacted with tremendous enthusiasm to this classic film. If you have a taste for such great 1930s epics as King Kong, Gunga Din, and King Solomon's Mines, you will enjoy it as well. The 1965 version with Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is fun as well but has even less to do with the themes of Haggard's original novel. It does however have a more up to date feel for those who care about glossy production values.

Anyone who loves epic music in pictures must see, or at least hear, this movie, which has little enough otherwise to recommend it other than its often striking visual inventiveness. It is, in a sense, the feminine flip side to "King Kong", and even shares certain thematic elements. My perspective is a bit unusual; I fell in love with the music when I was 16, years before I actually saw the film, by way of scratchy old transcription discs taped and distributed by the Max Steiner Music Society ages before "movie music" had won the respect it now enjoys. Steiner's score is in his most expressionistic mode, highly akin to "Kong" but more operatic; there is even a full-scale ballet in the last act! The music is a perfect accompaniment to Haggard's novel, of which I am also very fond despite its old-fashioned elements. I have this marvelous fantasy of a new remake, faithful to the book, with a new recording of Steiner's score! Alas, not too likely. Both the novel and the music are of an earlier age probably not commercial enough today. Helen Gahagan was actually an opera singer (years before becoming the famous "pink lady" of the Nixon campaign for California!) and her approach to the part is remote, perhaps more suited to a silent movie. Cinematographer Roy Hunt positively roasts the woman with light in an effort to give her an otherworldly quality. Randolph Scott and Helen Mack are both in way over their heads, although subsidiary actors like Samuel Hinds, Lumsden Hare, Noble Johnson and the immortal Gustav van Seyffertitz come off rather better. Nigel Bruce does his standard pompous British ass, which is a pity, as he was capable of much better. The decor is great fun: this is the palace of the Emperor Ming the Merciless' dreams, if only he'd had the budget! But the superb score overrides all else. It would probably not be appropriate for me to openly hawk CDs in this place, but the original soundtrack of this picture is available from Brigham Young University archive. Beg, borrow or steal it today! The ballet sequence is as powerful as anything in Stravinsky, and no higher praise is possible. A pity the movie is not equal to its soundtrack; but that's a problem Steiner ran into more than once in his career.

"She," adapted from H. Rider Haggard's timeless tale, has been produced multiple times, although never as entertainingly as the 1935 version, starring the imposing Helen Gahagan as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the eternally beautiful ruler of the lost kingdom of Kor. This would be the only film appearance of Gahagan, a noted stage and opera star who later entered the political arena as Helen Gahagan Douglas. Reportedly, Gahagan was embarrassed by the movie and vowed never to heed Hollywood's call again. But perhaps she was her own severest critic, since "She" represents Depression Era escapism at its very peak.

The movie was produced by Merian C. Cooper, who'd struck it rich two years earlier with "King Kong." Those with sharp eyes will note that the enormous gate cutting Kor off from the outside world is the same one which served -- for awhile -- to hold Kong in his natural habitat on Skull Island. This outrageously opulent adventure tale stars the stoic Randolph Scott as American explorer John Vincey, who ventures into the Arctic to find the story behind a cryptic, 500-year-old letter. Accompanying him are the jolly Holly (Nigel Bruce, later to become a familiar face as Dr. Watson in the Nigel Rathbone "Sherlock Holmes" movies) and the feisty Tanya (Helen Mack), who's secretly attracted to John.

After surviving an avalanche and battling cave-dwelling cannibals, the intrepid trio comes face to face with a much greater danger, the imperious She, who has been bathing in a flame of eternal life and biding her time for centuries, looking for true love. "I am yesterday and today and tomorrow," She muses, shortly before deciding John is the man worth waiting half a millennium for. Tanya, however, has other ideas. Thrillingly scored by Max Steiner and featuring backdrops you won't believe (check out the patio of Holly and Tanya's apartment), the movie climaxes with a dazzling ceremony in the Hall of Kings, featuring hundreds of extras performing some of the most bizarre choreography ever filmed. That sequence alone would make the movie worthwhile, but it turns out to be only one of the many treasures of "She."

This is an uneven movie, with an uneven script and uneven acting (Randolph Scott is particularly unconvincing too much of the time), but its strengths are remarkable.

She's music and sets are astonishingly good. Steiner's score is aptly suited to the twists and turns of the action, and at times it even sounds as though there's a theremin playing, although it's probably just a violin at the high end of its range. (Note/wuestion: why doesn't the spellchecker for a film website not recognize the word "theremin"? Surely that instrument has been used to notable effect in many movies.)

The "natural" sets (ice cliffs, snowy plains, and spooky caverns) are dramatic and artful, and the architectural sets, influenced by cubism, expressionism, and art deco, are among the finest pieces of design in the history of film. The abstract costumes of the inhabitants of She's kingdom (desighed by Aline Bernstein) are also breathtaking in their stylishness and imaginativeness. The lighting and cinematography is also noteworthy, and the special effects are very good for their time.

This may sound like I'm dwelling on peripheral issues, but when the score, art direction, and camera-work are this inventive, they turn an OK film into a wonderful one. Few movies have ever been such delights to the eye and ear.

Story of a young man Leo Vincey who after hearing of his dying uncle tell the fantastic story of his ancestor 500 years ago, who found a lost kingdom and a pillar of eternal flame which resided with in, decides to go to the frozen north (in the original Haggard novel, it was East Africa), with his uncle's lab parter Horace Holly, a gold hungry guide, and the guide's daughter Tonya. When the guide is killed in an avalanche, it opens an entrance to the lost kingdom of Kor, where in resides the flame and it's keeper and kingdom ruler, Queen Hash-a-Mo-Tep, or She Who Must Be Obeyed. SHE believes Vincey to be her former lover of 500 years ago, who is also Vincey's ancestor. SHE later then tries to make sure that Vincey stay in the kingdom with her alone for eternity, even if it means the death of Tonya, whom Leo is really in love with. Very good picture with decent performances by the entire cast, but the acting couldn't overcome the melodramatic script, especially in Scott's case. Very good set design and art decoration by Polglase with the art-deco style of the 30's. Obviously not the equal of Cooper's prior masterpiece King Kong, but still a very well done piece and much better than the Andress version. Rating- 7.