Word: soundtrack
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most of Kim's backgrounds (and some of its action) were filmed in India, and M-G-M technicians have done an expert job of blending the studio scenes into the location footage. While the screen overflows with exotic local color, the soundtrack matches its extravagance with Kipling's quaint version of the Indian idiom. Even grownups who are dragged off to see Kim are likely to have no regrets...
They play the mysteries of darkest Africa to the hilt. The camera pans over hundreds of blank and weirdly painted native faces; the soundtrack features native drums, beating endlessly; and there are cannibals, shricking animals, and a full complement of snakes, spiders, and other slimy things with legs which crawl. Since the majority of the actors are real natives, their own inscrutability adds to the general air of mystery...
...broken glasses, cigarette butts-and finally settling on the most pathetic: the father (Spencer Tracy) of the bride (Actress Taylor). Tracy, slumped in an armchair, massages a stockinged foot and begins to recount the events leading up to the disaster. Then, with his wry comments as counterpoint on the soundtrack, the movie takes up the account in flashback...
...spots, without risking originality, the songs and dances give the movie some zest. Too often they display the outworn grotesqueries of Carmen Miranda and the excessive juvenility of Actress Powell. Occasionally, to denote conscious hamming by members of the heroine's acting fam ily, the soundtrack breaks into a few pompous bars of Wagner. It is not much of a gag, but it is a handy guide to the intentions of the players...
...thing, the soundtrack of the movie, which has been making the rounds for about 10 years, is not what it ought to be, or even what it once was. For another thing, the technicolor, which is supposed to evoke the fairy tale atmosphere of faraway Japan, only makes the picture look like a collection of colored postcards. And Kenny Baker plays Nanki-Poo, the wandering minstrell, as if he were an Irish Tenor. Apparently some one forgot to tell him that he was not singing for Jack Benny...