SHE


(US 1935)




b/w



RT: 95 mins

Pro Co: RKO-Radio Pictures

Dirs: Irving Pichel, Lansing C. Holden;

Pro: Merian C. Cooper;

Wrs: Ruth Rose; Dudley Nichols (addit dial);

Pro Assoc: Shirley Burden.

Phot: J. Roy Hunt;

Film Ed: Ted Cheesman;

Mus: Max Steiner;

Art Dir: Van Nest Polglase; AL Herman (assoc).

Photo FX: Vernon Walker;

Sound FX: Walter Elliot.

Dance Dir: Benjamin Zemach.



Cast: Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott, Helen Mack, Nigel Bruce; Gustav von
Seyffertitz (uncred), Lumsden Hare (uncred), Samuel S. Hinds (uncred), Julius
Adler (uncred), Noble Johsnon (uncred), Ray Corrigan (uncred), Jim Thorpe
(uncred).



INTRODUCTION


This was the seventh cinematic adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's 1887 seminal
"lost race" novel, and the first of the sound era.



Intended as a follow-up to producer (and head of production at RKO) Merian C.
Cooper's exotic adventures The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and King Kong along
with its sequel The Son of Kong (both 1933). She reunites many of the cast and
crew from these productions. However, this 1935 venture parts company from the
source material, and its predecessors, in a number of key areas, making it
something of a unique enterprise in Cooper's canon.



SYNOPSIS


The elderly, dying patriarch of the Vincey family, along with his scientist
friend Holly, anxiously await the arrival of Leo, the last of the Vincey line,
from the US. Leo eventually arrives, blaming his ship being fogbound for the
late arrival. He queries the contents of the telegram he was sent urging him to
travel to England to take part in a great adventure. Holly informs him of his
uncle's health problems due to radium poisoning and of his eagerness to explain
everything to him. On meeting his nephew, the old man remarks on the incredible
physical similarity between Leo and the painting of an ancestor hanging on a
wall. The subject turns out to be one John Vincey who lived in the 15th century
and who embarked on an expedition to the frozen wastes of Northern Europe and
disappeared for some five years. Leo's uncle is a sceptical man of scientist,
normally dismissive of reincarnation , but finds such a close resemblance
between his nephew and his ancestor from centuries before, too much of a
coincidence, and possibly a sign to continue the quest began in the 15th
century. A great family secret is then revealed when Holly tells Leo that after
five years in the wilderness, his ancestor's widow turned up at an English
merchant's property in Northern Poland, telling incoherent tales of her
adventures. Before she died, she recovered sufficiently to have someone write
down a journal detailing her five missing years. Holly produces the document
and relates its contents. Mrs Vincey explains that she and her husband had
ventured into the farthest reaches of Northern Siberia, beyond a mountain region
called the Schlugel Pass. There, John Vincey was murdered, apparently because
he chose to accompany his wife back home, and later her party of natives were
attacked and wiped out by a large beast, defeated by her personal manservant,
who died of wound sustained in the attack. Also mentioned is the existence of a
sacred flame that grants immortality. Leo remains unconvinced and so is taken
by Holly and his uncle to their laboratory. For many years they have been
experimenting with different types of radiation in order to replicate the
effects of the flame described by Mrs Vincey. Ultimately they failed, but came
close on a number of occasions, at the cost of the uncle's health. They believe
that some sort of super-element, occurring naturally in the earth, and related
to the elements they themselves created, halting the aging process, must exist
in the Northern wastes. The uncle gives Leo a small gold statuette, bearing the
inscription, "Here burns the flame of Life", and repeats the assertion that the
flame must exist. As his nephew agrees to mount an expedition to look for
element producing the flame, the uncle expires. Months later, Holly and Leo
have reached the Russian Arctic on a husky-led sledge, and stop at a trading
post. Initially treated in a hostile fashion by the owner, a man called
Dugmore, they are eventually welcomed in and given food. They are served by
Dugmore's daughter, Tanya. He asks the two men if he can be of service and the
two men reply that they require some natives to help them get beyond the
Schlugel Pass. Dugmore claims that natives are terrified about venturing to
that area, with his daughter telling them of the legend of a white woman
escaping from a strange land far to the North. She also mentions another part
of the legend that says that if a man can make it to this strange land, then he
may attain everlasting life. Leo shows her the ornament, immediately
attracting the attention of Dugmore. He agrees to lead a group of natives that
will take the two men to their destination, providing that they make him a
partner. Despite their strong reservations, they agree. The next morning, the
team has been assembled and they are to be accompanied by Tanya, as her father
thinks it would be safer than leaving her alone at the post. After a week
following the base of a mountain range at the Schlugel Pass, the team decide to
make camp in a canyon. Holly is deeply unhappy about the location, worried
about the possibility of an avalanche, but his concerns are dismissed out of
hand by Dugmore. As she prepares a meal, Leo learns more about Tanya's
background, and both find they are increasingly attracted to each other. Just
then Dugmore reports that his natives have found something important on a
mountain ledge. They refuse to return to the find, so Holly, Tanya, Leo and
Dugmore venture up themselves. They are shocked to discover a clear glacier,
through which they see a body dressed in 15th century clothing, lying alongside
the body of a sabre tooth tiger. This is obviously the body of the Vincey's
manservant who died battling the tiger. Dugmore spots a held by the servant has
spilled its load of gold coins and, as the rest of the party make their way back
to the camp, starts hacking into the glacier with his ice-pick. Despite
warnings from Leo and Holly, his hacking eventually causes a massive avalanche
that buries the camp and all the natives. Holly, Leo and Tanya survive by
standing under a rocky outcrop. Surveying their situation, the despair of their
prospects, until Leo spots an opening in the side of the mountain, leading into
a massive cavern. They enter.



REVIEW


Undoubtedly the biggest departure from Haggard's source material is the locale
in which the film takes place.



Instead of the hidden valley in Darkest Africa as featured in the book, or
indeed the remote tropical island locations favoured by Merian C. Cooper's
previous adventure movies, the producer chose to set his film in the Arctic
Circle. Quite why this decision was made remains unclear, since portions of
dialogue, in which Siberians are referred to as "native bearers" and the
protagonists as "white men", suggest that Ruth Rose's screenplay originally had
an African setting. This impression is underlined by the presence of a tribe of
Neanderthals (led by Noble Johnson, Murders in the Rue Morgue 1932) who act just
like the savages seen in scores of jungle adventure movies, at one point dancing
around a pot boiling on a fire. Additionally, the official name given to She,
Ayesha in the Haggard work, Hash-A-Mo-Tep seems distinctly Egyptian in origin.



Other revisions adopted for this version of She include the simplification of
the reincarnation element contained within the plot. Haggard has a Vincey
family member from 2000 years ago reincarnated many times over the centuries, on
each occasion attempting to locate the whereabouts of a legendary immortal
woman, along with the source of her power, details of which are contained on an
ancient parchment, the contents of which have never been properly deciphered.
Ruth Rose's screenplay has the timeline for the plot's backstory extend only 500
years into the past, to the 15th century, with the last of the Vincey line, Leo
(Randolph Scott, Supernatural 1933), apparently being the only example of the
reincarnation of his ancestor, John.



Clues leading to the lost civilisation of Kor, where the flame is located, are
contained within pages of a relatively modern journal, written in
straightforward English by the ancestor's widow. The relationship between Leo
and Holly has also been altered, here the latter is a friend of the latter's
uncle, rather than being his ward and guardian in the original work.



For dramatic purposes, Rose introduces an additional female character in the
form of Helen Mack (The Return of Peter Grimm 1935) as the trader's daughter,
who acts as a rival to She for the affections of Scott, forming a romantic
triangle.



She does contain allusions to King Kong that seem intentional on the part of the
makers, implying that this story takes place within the same world depicted in
that film. The most obvious is the presence of the huge wooden door, slightly
redressed, that protected the island tribe from Kong, and here serving as the
entrance to the queen's inner citadel. Another visual reference occurs at the
climax when Scott, Helen Mack and Nigel Bruce attempt to escape from a
sacrificial ceremony by attempting to traverse a partially collapsed bridge,
with most of their pursuers failing to jump to the other side, or ending up
being tipped into a deep chasm below by Scott dislodging the remaining section,
this echoing the scene in the 1933 production where the simian kills several
crewmen by shifting the log they are standing on.



Helen Gahagan's Queen of Kor shares some of the qualities as Kong. Among them
are the fact that her very name inspires terror in those who hear it, while at
the same time instilling unstinting devotion and loyalty in others, through the
manipulation of that fear.



Gahangan's entrance also recalls her ape-like predecessor. As with Kong, she is
at first not seen, but heard, through a curtain over an entrance at the top of a
steep flight of stairs. On seeing the face of hero Randolph Scott, brought to
her on a stretcher, she emits a piercing scream and emerges from behind the
drape and runs down the stairs to greet what she assumes to be her lover from
centuries previously.



While the share some common features, the characters of Kong and Hash-A-Mo-Tep
are poles apart. Kong can be seen as a deeply primal force of nature, whose
violent and destructive outbursts are the result of his purely instinctive
nature. The queen, meanwhile, may have survived in her physical body for many
hundreds of years, but emotionally, spiritually and morally she is largely dead.
Her only real emotions are obsession, jealousy and hate, the latter reserved for
the Neanderthals, possibly outcasts from her pristine world. As she has
outlived everyone who has ever encountered her, she has become more and more
detached from the rest of humanity, inured to the feelings of others.



This state of detachment, resulting in She's rather cold demeanour, means that
the Arctic setting chosen for this film can now be considered rather apt.



Shot mainly on a studio soundstage in Los Angeles, the exteriors representing
the Siberian tundra are strikingly realised by special effects wizard Vernon
Walker (The Ghost Ship 1943) and his team. A mixture of matte paintings and
free-standing sets, there appears to be no attempt at realism in the
presentation of the mountain ranges, snowscapes and glaciers Randolph and his
fellow travellers venture through on their way to Kor. Instead, with
deliberately obvious optical work, depicting mountains and other strange
geographic features, growing at impossible angles and seen from bizarre
perspectives, the landscape the characters explore is a distinctly surrealist
one, looking forward to later on in the film when someone refers to a "kingdom
of the imagination".



Where the film really excels, however, is in the kingdom of Kor itself,
particularly in its inner sanctum where the queen and her subjects reside.
Featuring stunningly exaggerated interiors, with large ornate metal doors,
impossible high walls and highly polished metallic floors, the art direction by
Van Nest Polglase is a triumph of art deco design. The icy demeanour of
Hash-A-Mo-Tep is echoed in the white interiors, sharp edges and reflective
surfaces that, together with crisp cinematography by J. Roy Hunt (I Walked with
a Zombie 1943), which also evokes the sterile, in all senses of the word,
environment in which she exists.



Amongst the most impressive work by Polglase is the large, gleaming white marble
staircase, with ornate burning torches on either side, where She first
encounters Scott, the balcony with the extraordinary view of Kor, on which Helen
Mack tries to talk the hero into returning home with her, and the queen's
personal chamber, all featuring fascinating art deco ornamentation together with
exaggerated dimensions and minimalist artistic elements, making the a visually
fascinating piece of work.



By far the most memorable piece of art direction appears at the film's climax,
when the heroine is about to be thrown into a fire pit as part of a thanksgiving
ceremony arranged by the queen. This features a huge, aircraft hangar-style
set, featuring two sets of stairs, one leading toward a throne, the other
leading to an enormous pair of metal doors, and at the centre of the chamber the
platform over the fire pit. The most striking feature, however, are the series
of incredibly ambitious statues of incredible dimensions, that adorn the wall of
the chambers. Surely one of the most spectacular creations of the 1930s, and
certainly of this genre, it remains a mystery why Van Nest Polglase did not
receive an Oscar nomination for his efforts here.



One person who did get a nomination was She's dance director Benjamin Zemach, a
Russian émigré and noted for his experimental dance projects on Broadway during
the 1930s and 1940s. Here, the sacrificial ceremony begins with an elaborate
modern dance routine featuring masked performers dancing around the pit; they
are soon joined by literally hundreds of extras who fill the hall, performing a
variety of highly imaginative dance sequences. This is all accompanied by
another superb piece of craftsmanship from composer Max Steiner whose score adds
considerable power to the dance routines. The rest of the film is very well
served by Steiner, whose score is lavish and multi-layered, being especially
impressive in the way small details are used to enhance the drama.



The dance sequence ends with Scott rescuing Mack from being sacrificed and,
together with her and Nigel Bruce fighting his way out of the temple. This is
superbly staged, with the protagonists running across the polished and
reflective floor, pursued by hordes of She's henchmen and priests, whom the hero
dispatches with his pistol, fists and by spilling burning oil down the steps
leading from the place, causing a number of them to flail about on fire
(featuring some full-body burn stunts).



Other impressive scenes include Gahagan running down the marble staircase to
Scott, featuring an elaborate high-angled crane shot, as well as a striking
example of an early optical zoom, a fight in some caverns after Bruce is saved
from sacrifice, with some energetically staged brawls during which Scott's
character is concussed, and following their escape from the sacrificial chamber,
the protagonists flight across the bridge. That last scene features excellent
mattework, showing perilous the condition of the bridge is, while also conveying
how deep the chasm is below it, and underlined by creative sound effects form
Walter Elliot.



Probably the best piece of effects work from Vernon Walker occurs earlier on in
the film, where hacking into a glacier by Dugmore (Lumsden Hare, Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde 1941) causes a wall of ice to collapse onto the base camp below.
Involving a mixture of some live action with much miniature work, Walker
efficiently conveys the scale of the destructive force of the avalanche, helped
in no small part by Elliot's work in the audio field. Least impressive is the
appearance of a graphic supposed to represent a human and a sabre-tooth tiger
(sadly the film's member carnivorous member of the animal kingdom) trapped
inside a sheer glacier, seen only in medium shot but still obviously very rough
in its execution.



On a technical and creative level, She can be seen as a textbook case on how to
produce a fantasy adventure motion picture, if the resources are available.
There are, unfortunately, some major issues with the finished article that may
detract from the viewing experience.



She's biggest liability is undoubtedly the script by Ruth Rose. Unlike King
Kong and The Son of Kong, both of which are excellent examples of tight,
economical storytelling, this is a decidedly plodding affair, with little in the
way of narrative drive or dramatic tension. A major part of the problem is the
incredibly stilted dialogue that Rose lumbers the film and its performers with,
much of it highly literary, rather than cinematic in content, and so awkwardly
presented it becomes uncomfortable to listen to. Particularly inept are the
supposedly passionate exchanges between Randolph Scott and Helen Gahagan, which
die as soon as they are uttered, and the turgid romantic triangle between the
hero, the queen and Helen Mack as the trader's daughter, with all sense or
passion, or indeed any sort of credible emotion, stifled.



Matters are not helped by some decided unsuitable performances. Randolph Scott,
on loan from Paramount Pictures and on the cusp of superstardom in the Western
genre, seems desperately uncomfortable in the role of romantic hero, obviously
having issues with the material he has to work with. Nigel Bruce (The Hound of
the Baskervilles 1939) essays another variation of his "silly ass" Englishman
stereotype which was already beginning to grate at this early stage in his
career, while Helen Mack, a major asset in The Son of Kong, while vivacious and
likeable, is largely wasted, acting mainly as a decorative damsl-in-distress.



Helen Gahagan, as Hash-A-Mo-Tep, had already established herself as a formidable
in opera and the classical theatre before being offered the title role in her
motion picture debut. While physically adept for the part, Gahagan does tend
over-emphasise the coldness of the character, at the expense of her repressed
passion and this, together with a highly theatrical style of acting, full of
exaggerated physical traits, results in a performance that may remind viewers of
actors from the silent era. Ultimately, Gahagan's queen is simply not exotic,
or indeed interesting enough, for a film such as this. Bizarrely some of the
costumes worn by the actress have her looking like the Wicked Queen from Walt
Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).



As with Cooper's previous fantasy adventures, two directors helm She,
actor-turned-filmmaker Irving Pichel, who had directed the highly influential
The Most Dangerous Game with Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Lansing C. Holden,
normally employed as a production designer and storyboard artist, and whose only
directorial credit this appears to be.



It seems likely that with his technical background, Holden handled most of the
sequences involving some form of effects work or more elaborate action
co-ordination, such as the fight in the cavern with the Neanderthals, the flight
from the sacrificial temple and the crossing of the unstable rock bridge. All
of these are handled with aplomb and are major assets the completed work.



Pichel was a useful actor in some fifty plus films from the end of the silent
era until the 1950s, including the cult favourite Dracula's Daughter (1936),
directed by Lambert Hillyer, and became a prolific director from the early
1930s, among his notable works being Destination Moon (1950), made for George
Pal, and credited with kicking off the science fiction boom of the 1950s. If
Pichel was responsible for the material outside of the set-pieces, then his
involvement can be seen as a very minor entry in his canon.



The film's many and lengthy dialogue scenes, already saddled with Rose's banal
dialogue, are shot in a flat, unimaginative style, usually with long, static
takes in almost constant medium shot. With addition of the decidedly awkward
acting, the end result feels just like watching the filmed record of a
theatrical performance, rather than a motion picture. This impression becomes
particularly strong in the final act, when She emerges from the flame for a
second time, only to begin withering away as the centuries take their toll.
Again filmed from a very limited number of camera angles, seemingly chosen
because they resemble the view from the front stalls of a theatre, and even with
the addition of optical effects to create the flame, this sequence has more in
common with a stage play than a piece of cinema. At the end, the performers are
even seen exiting stage left.



There are some compensations to be found, mainly within some of the picture's
subtexts. While ostensibly a piece of fantasy, the plot does occasionally
venture into science fiction. This is especially true when Leo and his uncle
(Samuel S. Hinds, Deluge 1933) discuss the nature of the eternal flame, with the
latter suggesting that it may be a powerful new element, currently unknown to
man, but which occurs in nature and may be related to radium or X-rays.



The scientific features of the screenplay are, however, undermined by the
strongly religious content that is a feature of most Hollywood genre product
well into the 1950s. There are a number of references by the queen to Jesus
Christ and the Christian faith, which she dismisses, apparently to be punished
later on by some "higher power", according to Holly. It is also suggested that
the element contained in the flame is the property of God himself, and should
not be tampered with by mankind.



Interestingly, the immense corridors and caverns which feature so prominently in
She, taken with the style of armoured garb worn by her guards, looks forward to
another exercise in art deco style, Frederick Stephani's classic chapter play
Flash Gordon, made the year following this production.



Despite its undoubted technical virtuosity and stunning appearance, thanks to
serious shortcomings in most of the other areas of its production, this remains
a deeply flawed work, and therefore a minor addition to genre cinema.



She actually lost RKO-Radio Pictures a substantial amount of money, reportedly
almost $200,000. Helen Gahagan, coming from outside of the Hollywood studio
system, unfairly became the scapegoat for the picture's failure. This was her
only film and she returned to the stage until 1940 when, as Helen Gahagan
Douglas, she entered the world of politics.





©Iain McLachlan 2004



Chroma-Noize cult sci-fi and horror movie reviews:
www.geocities.com/bigfatpav2000






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]