North West Frontier
Director: Seymour Friedman
Year: 1959
Rating: 7.5
Aka - Flame Over India (American title)
I better put an end to my watching these
British Raj films or I will soon be eating mushy peas, drinking warm beer,
greeting friends with tally-ho old chum and singing Hail Britannia. This
was a really good one though. A bit of the stiff upper lip stuff and England
brings order to the world, but mainly it is just a great adventure yarn with
an amazing first twenty minutes and then suspense for the remainder. A lovely
cast of Kenneth More (Father Brown), Lauren Bacall, Herbert Lom and the wonderful
Wilfred Hyde-White. And a special shout out to I.S. Johar as the train conductor.
Johar was in lots of Bollywood films from the 1950s to his death in the mid-1980s
but he also found time to appear in a few Western films - Lawrence of Arabia
and Death on the Nile (that was him saying goody goody gumdrops). As far
as I am concerned, he is the star of this film. It was shot in India and
Spain with the beginning certainly in India with hundreds and hundreds of
extras.
The film wastes no time with a prelude other
than saying it is 1905 and once again the Muslim tribes are rebelling - not
just against the British but also against Hindi rule. Captain Scott (More)
has been ordered to bring a Hindi child Prince to safety from the rebels.
Along with the boy's governess (Bacall) they get away just in time as the
palace is swarmed with rebels and the father slaughtered. They get to a British
fort but it is not much safer with thousands of attackers outside breaching
the walls. The scene of the panicked people trying to get the last train
out is astonishing - men on the top and holding on to the side. I was fully
expecting someone on the top to begin dancing. Later more gut wrenching is
when they come across the train with everyone killed. The ground and train
littered with dead bodies and vultures by the dozens closing in. Perhaps
a scene influenced by similar tragedies during the Partition.
Scott finds one more train engine that the
cheery Gupta (Johar) tells Scott that he can get it to run. Scott attaches
one car to it, a few machine guns, a protective barrier and takes the boy,
the governess, the government representative (Hyde-White), the wife of the
commander, a journalist (Herbert Lom) and a few soldiers with him. They have
hundreds of miles to go once they break through the rebel lines and every
mile of it is tense and dangerous. Some have compared it to Stagecoach. A
little bit. No Monument Valley but some great rugged territory to pass through
(probably Spain) with one hazard after another to overcome. Scott is your
typical low-key British officer - heroic down to his toes but never one to
speak of it. This turned out to be far better than I expected. Produced by
Rank who knew how to do this Raj thing. Directed by J. Lee Thompson - The
Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear soon followed after this.
