Word: technicolorful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Originally entitled Red Dust and set in the Orient, Mogambo has now been converted into the latest in a series of technicolor African epics which includes King Solomon's Mines, The African Queen, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Following the example of its predecessors, the film devotes considerable footage to sweeping shots of the varied flora and fauna of Kenya and Tanganyika. Unfortunately, even a panoramic screen and stereophonic sound cannot destroy the feeling of having seen all this before. Leaping gazelles, prowling lions, and flamingos rising against an orange African sunset are getting just a little commonplace...
...script (Gilliat worked with Leslie Baily, whose Gilbert & Sullivan Book was a 1952 bestseller) have deftly wired them all together to make a charming, if slightly artificial musical forget-me-not. Some of the charm is due to the spirited stuffiness of the Victorian settings and the muted Technicolor. Best of all, several members of the famed D'Oyly Carte company (Martyn Green, Thomas Round, Gron Davies) give silken-fine performances...
Mogambo (MGM) is jampacked with Technicolor shots of such splendid animals as lions, leopards, gazelles and Ava Gardner. The curator of this photogenic zoo is Clark Gable, pictured as a tough, conscienceless "white hunter" who suffers a predictable attack of morality as the movie ends. Filmed in Africa, Mogambo borrowed its plot from the 21-year-old Red Dust (which also starred Gable, with the late Jean Harlow playing the Ava Gardner role). The dialogue seems to date back to an even earlier era than the original film...
Recent months have proved that a movie in three dimensions does not necessarily have depth; A Lion is in the Streets demonstrates that a picture in Technicolor is not necessarily colorful. In fact, in every respect bur one, this film is drab and pale. The exception is James Cagney's portrayal of Hank Martin, the ambitious backwoods peddler who almost "lynched a whole state." Against the rest of the film, Martin stands out like a Lutree potrait superimposed on a black-and-white pencil sketch...
...Fingers of Dr. T. Why a small boy hates piano teachers, inventively told in Technicolor (TIME, June...