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MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1976K eatinremem 'Man Who Would Be KingTUCSON DAILY CITIZENA movie in which everythin^ clicksBy M1CHELINE KEATINGCitizen Movie CriticThe big surprise among the holiday movies was John Huston’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” now showing at Buena Vista II. It arrived almost unheralded arid turnedout to be one of the year’s best films.It is an oldfashioned movie on a grand scale and in the best sense. Based upon a short story by Rudyard Kipling, Huston and Gladys Hill, who co-wrote the screenplay, have used the fragile tale as a jumping off place.Making Kipling himself acharacter as the narrator and with Sean Connery and Michael Caine as two British soldiers of fortune who, in the mid-1880s embark upon a mad venture to make themselves kings of a remote territory innorthern Afghanistan, Huston and Hill concocted a story of adventure that is teeming with wonderful and incredible happenings.Using the device of having Peachy Camehan (Caine), one of the soldiers of fortune, return to tell Kipling his fantastic story, most of the movie relates Peachy’s and Danny Dravot’s (Connery) passage through desolate countryagainst terrific odds. Althoughit was actually filmed in Mor-roco and the French Alps, it is not difficult to believe the twoadventurers are crossing the Himalayans in a remote territory similar to Tibet.Not only do they reach their promised land, they succeed beyond the wildest exaggeration. Taking over the first village they reach, they continue to conquer the whole territory until finally Dravot is summoned to a lamasery where he is recognized as the descendant of Alexander the Great, the last warrior to conquer the land in 300 B.C.The lamas make Dravot their god-king and turn over to him a fortune in jewels and gold. All would have been well had not Dravot, in the way of mortals, started to take the whole crazy show seriously. He decides he must marry and beget a dynasty. When his bride bites him during themarriage ceremony, his bleeding is proof that he is no god and the lamas turn upon him. Peachy manages to get away, to reach Kipling and tell his unbelievable story — well, almost unbelievable.Where Huston in his direction of the movie has succeeded beyond his wildest hope isin the masterly way in which he has taken this anachronism and made it stick to today’s standards. Connery and Caine are perfect as the pair of adventurers who in the end become the victims of their folly. Christopher Plummer, in the relatively minor role of Kipling, is superb in providing the balance between the soldiers of fortune and the world they turn their back upon.In spirit the movie is reminiscent of Huston’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” It has the same hardness and mellow irony that makes everything click.
Newspaper Details
Tucson Daily Citizen
Tucson, Arizona, US
Mon, Jan 05, 1976
Page 23
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 13 Jan 2020
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