“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din”

Gunga Din

Bolstering Big Hollywood as the go-to online spot for real writing about movies, Schizoid Mann’s manly and surprisingly “otherly” (no spoilers please) piece on Gunga Din is one of the best posts in the site’s short life. Very little of value about movies has been written or presented in the mass print or electronic dinosaur media for decades, decades i tell you, and that includes the Oscar broadcasts. (and excepting Robert Osborne on Turner Classics.) So if you’re interested in film and all manner of topics surrounding the art and the business of it you’ll want to give it a look.

“Kali!”

We watched Gunga Din here at the Shears Compound just a few months ago as a matter of fact; exposed Lance, Leo and Escella to it, or tried to anyway, and Mrs. Shears enjoyed it as well. This continued a family tradition of appreciation for the work. I remember my Ma and old late Paw loved the film, and the reason I remember is I have a clear echo of them in the 1960s pointing out that Sam Jaffe, who play Gunga played Dr. Zorba, hospital boss of neurotic TV neurosurgeon Ben Casey.

So hopefully they’ll pass it on to their offspring, to watch in whatever format story-telling will take further down the century. Maybe they’ll absorb it through their skin. The Movie Patch. Whatever. Gunga Din will be there because it’s just good storytelling.

Some people can’t watch those old films. They mock the stagey speech and sneer at the image quality. They’ve been raised, and conditioned, on color and the (supposed) naturalistic speech patterns of modern film/TV. But one of the facets I like best about films from before the 70s is that they speak the lines clearly, so that you can understand what the hell they are saying. This must have lent discipline to the writing, since the writer knows in the back of his mind that the lines he transfers to the actors mouths will be heard. Write lines for modern hacktors like Sean Penn and you know he will not only change them, but you might not even be able to decipher what he changed them to, since mumbling is what passes for acting now. When screening modern film/TV, on average once per viewing, and often more often,  we have to pause and go back to see what was said. Sometimes we even have to turn on the subtitles, for an American film!

Maybe improved sound is the reason. The audio technology from the infancy and adolescence of the talkies may have required more enunciation; and so the actors didn’t have to worry about modulation or their vocal instrument, they just spoke the lines, had some personality and looked great, something everyone in this film managed — even poor, brave Gunga.