It's easy to decry this original non-musical version of the story of Anna and the King as one which glorifies the civilising influence of the west over the uneducated, unsophisticated and unenlightened people of the east. Putting to one side the practice of the time of having white actors being made-up and adopting awkward accents to play the roles of foreigners, we're led to believe that the common-sense and piety dispensed by Irene Dunne's tutor to the Royal Household can reach out and change the despotic conduct of the King, played by Rex Harrison.
So it is difficult to unpick the overweening patronising attitudes displayed in the writing, acting and direction but somewhere beneath all the flummery, helped by the sympathetic acting of Dunne and Harrison, as well as by Leo J Cobb as the King's Prime Minister, Gale Sondergaard as Lady Thiang and Linda Darnell as his rebellious current favourite, Lady Tuptim, it's just about possible to see it as "only a movie" and appreciate besides, at least to some extent, the story-telling, crowd-scenes and studio-sets of Golden Age Hollywood. It can however be difficult to watch at times, besides all that unedifying servility, there's the ruthless punishment meted out to Tuptim and her lover when they're barbarically burned at the stake by the vengeful king (at least the later musical had the sense to tone down her punishment to mere exile).
It sure is strange to watch a film painting such an idealised picture of Western, or more specifically American democracy at a time when Hollywood itself was coming under attack from the House Unamerican Activities Committee which would lead to the Blacklist and in the process ruin the careers of left-leaning movie-makers and workers of whom Sondergaard herself (who was actually nominated for an Oscar for her role) was a prominent casualty.
The revisionist in me then should abhor and detest this film but I'm going to apply the old "of its time" defence and say that for all its faults, it still managed to entertain me with its old-style razzle-dazzle.
So it is difficult to unpick the overweening patronising attitudes displayed in the writing, acting and direction but somewhere beneath all the flummery, helped by the sympathetic acting of Dunne and Harrison, as well as by Leo J Cobb as the King's Prime Minister, Gale Sondergaard as Lady Thiang and Linda Darnell as his rebellious current favourite, Lady Tuptim, it's just about possible to see it as "only a movie" and appreciate besides, at least to some extent, the story-telling, crowd-scenes and studio-sets of Golden Age Hollywood. It can however be difficult to watch at times, besides all that unedifying servility, there's the ruthless punishment meted out to Tuptim and her lover when they're barbarically burned at the stake by the vengeful king (at least the later musical had the sense to tone down her punishment to mere exile).
It sure is strange to watch a film painting such an idealised picture of Western, or more specifically American democracy at a time when Hollywood itself was coming under attack from the House Unamerican Activities Committee which would lead to the Blacklist and in the process ruin the careers of left-leaning movie-makers and workers of whom Sondergaard herself (who was actually nominated for an Oscar for her role) was a prominent casualty.
The revisionist in me then should abhor and detest this film but I'm going to apply the old "of its time" defence and say that for all its faults, it still managed to entertain me with its old-style razzle-dazzle.