Dec 27, 2023

She (1935)

Saw She (1935), a sort of Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs twist on Snow White.  It follows an English expedition into deepest Russia (or something, they're not very specific) to search for the fountain of youth, said by an ailing professor to be embodied in a flame of "pure radiation".  This pure radiation is to be found in an inexplicably warm, prehistory-evoking cave populated by brutish primitives.  The Snow White element comes in later along with the titular "She!" (always said looking into the distance: "She!") who is a vain and jealous queen of the cave-people.

Exciting stuff, but very campy.  It's interesting for the art deco design of the caves and statuary.  The performances feature broad and no-longer acceptable impressions of primitive tribes, dancing about fires and chanting and sacrificing our heroes and so on.  Of course there's a conventionally attractive damsel and some speechifying about eternal youth etc.  Some of the cave men wore some truly daring loin-clothes (someone call Lady Gaga!)

The film is decently silly and campy.  It's about the sort of thing you'd see on late-night movie shows.  It's not horrible or overly boring, just very dated and badly aged.  Ironic, considering the themes of eternal youth and all.

1 comment:

  1. It might be based on the book She, by H. Rider Haggard. I was just reading about how the book may have been inspired by the Modjadji, a hereditary queen in the Limpopo region of South Africa. Obscure knowledge for the win!

    ReplyDelete