"Thunder in the East" (1952)

It's Alan Ladd's birthday :-)  To celebrate, I have spent spare moments all day long screencapping this movie and writing up a long review of it.  Here we go! Time to enjoy...

Okay, there are a few other people in Thunder in the East (1952) also, but it's not their birthday, so you'll just have to learn about them as we go.  

This is a movie about illusions and what happens when people lose them.  At least, that's the main theme that stood out to me when I rewatched it last night, so I'll be exploring that throughout this review.  Which is also screencap heavy because this is not a movie that's well-known, though it's available in volume one of The Alan Ladd Collection from Via Vision.  And because, when it's Alan's birthday, I just can't help sharing lots of yummy screencaps of him ;-)

Although released in 1952, this was filmed in 1941, a mere four years after the events it depicts are supposed to take place.  The film is set in a small Indian province, far from the big cities, which a bandit named Newah Khan is threatening to overrun violently.  He intends to kill every English person left there, along with anyone who helps them.

American pilot and opportunist Steve Gibbs (Alan Ladd) blithely lands an airplane in the province's capitol and offers to sell his cargo of machine guns and ammunition to the local government.  He's confident that he'll make a tidy profit in a matter of hours.  That's an illusion which doesn't last long.

While waiting to meet the Maharajah, Steve takes note of a framed photograph of Mahatma Ghandi on the prime minister's desk.  This is our first clue that selling guns might not be as easy as expected.

Prime Minister Singh (Charles Boyer) is absolutely committed to not using violence against the bandits.  Not only is he unwilling to attack them, he is also unwilling to defend the city using weapons of any kind.  He says even if it takes two hundred years, peaceful resistance is the only way to truly win this conflict.  He clearly reveres the Indian leader Mahatma Ghandi, who had led Indian people to independence from British rule a few years before this movie takes place.  Ghandi had insisted on peaceful resistance, first to the British, then also when religious strife between Hindu and Muslim factions wracked the country.

Singh has taken the idea of "peaceful resistence" to an extreme, thinking that behaving in a peaceful way is what will convince others to be peaceful too.  He's living in an illusion of his own creation, and nothing Steve Gibbs says will shake his conviction that he can pacify the extremist bandits into leaving the city alone.

Steve gives up on the prime minister and sets his sights on getting an audience with the Maharajah to try to sell his guns straight to him.  He heads off for the city's big hotel, and along the way, befriends a street urchin called Moti Lal (Mark Cavell)

These two are pragmatic and clear-eyed, and they hit it off famously.  Ladd and the 12-year-old Cavell also have marvelous chemistry together, very chummy and comfortable.  I love seeing Ladd interact with kids in his films, as he clearly enjoyed being a dad and is really sweet and kindly whenever he shares a screen with a child actor.

The city's British population all hang out at the one big hotel, in a room they have claimed for their own private club.  And then the Indian people take down their club's sign, indicating that the British are no longer in control even there at the hotel.  This sends all the British expats into a tizzy.

All except Joan Willoughby (Deborah Kerr), a lovely British girl entertaining everyone by playing the piano.  She reprimands her fellow Britishers for not understanding that India was no longer under British rule and for thinking they can go on living there with no changes.  Steve overhears this and applauds her, tries to back her up in puncturing this illusion held by the other British expats, and has a door slammed in his face for his trouble.

Steve shrugs this off and heads up to his room for a bath.  It's interrupted by a French girl, Lizette (Corinne Calvet) who is desperate to get out of the city.  She knows he has an airplane and tries to wheedle her way into a ticket out.

Steve isn't exactly loathe to be wheedled.

Lizette clearly has a reputation for being willing to cozy up to men who have something she wants.  (I swear she's fully clothed in this shot, you just can't tell.)  She keeps resting her chin on Steve's shoulder, which is oddly endearing.  Steve is strictly a cash on the barrel head kind of guy when it comes to rides on his airplane... but he isn't adverse to getting friendly with prospective passengers.  However, we can all tell he's not seriously interested in Lizette.  He gives her some perfume, and they flirt a while, and then she leaves, saying she'll see him later.

Next thing we know, Steve's down in the bar, still trying to find a way to get an audience with the Maharajah.  Joan shows up to apologize to him on behalf of her door-slamming compatriots.  Some of her behavior confuses Steve for a few minutes until he realizes something surprising: Joan is blind.

Deborah Kerr's performance in this film is an absolute delight.  She manages to convey fragility and strength, childlike innocence and mature courage, all in one person.  She also really sells Joan's sightlessness, especially with small things like not meeting the eyes of other characters, and usually aiming her own gaze vaguely toward where she thinks people are.  And she never makes Joan seem either unbelievably independent or frustratingly fragile.  It's all excellent.

Anyway, Steve is intrigued by how adept this blind woman is in navigating the city -- even earning her living as a guide for tourists -- and spends the evening with her.  First, she takes him shopping, and then they end up dancing together at a club.

Steve and Joan flirt a lot.  She's bright and cheerful, but also somehow a bit childlike.  She has a lot of ideas about the world she lives in that are based on her childhood, when she could still see.  Joan was born in this city, and she thinks it hasn't changed since she was a child, except politically.

Steve doesn't disabuse her of her innocent illusions.  You can see he feels sorry for her, but he's more fascinated by her sweetness and light than anything else.

Naturally, we have a scene of Joan feeling Steve's face so she can "see" what he looks like.  She's kind of hesitant and girlishly happy about doing this.  But Steve gets very serious, his face filled with tenderness and then desire as she runs her hands all over his face.  

When the evening ends, Joan confides in Steve that she thinks she can get him an audience with the Maharajah.  That snaps Steve out of his growing interest in Joan and back into businessman mode.

Joan calls Steve up and gives him the glad news: he can meet with the Maharajah in the morning.  In exchange, he owes her a real picnic with sandwiches and potato salad and ants.

Joan lives with her grandfather, Dr. Willoughby (Cecil Kellaway), an elderly clergyman.  He greets Steve over the phone and tells him he's heard so much about this nice young man.  And we, the audience, start to realize that Joan has created an illusion around Steve, a girlish infatuation with the sort of nice person she thinks he must be, because that's what she wants him to be.

Steve really does get to meet the Maharajah (Charlie Lung), who turns out to be a pampered, fatuous coward preparing to flee the city on his private airplane and leave all the people there to their fates.  He doesn't want to buy Steve's guns, and Steve discovers he can't sell them to anyone else either because Prime Minister Singh has confiscated them and locked them away somewhere secret so no one can use them to harm anyone.

Steve is angry, naturally, and decides it's time to leave completely.  The bandits are getting closer and closer to the city, and those who have tried to flee via the roads have ended up dead.  So, Steve figures he can make up his losses for the confiscated weapons by selling tickets on his airplane.  He has room on it for about twenty people, which would be room for basically all the British expats left.  But when he names his price per ticket, the British people are horrified.  It's twice what a regular ticket would cost!

At first, Joan thinks he's joking.  Of course, her idealized Steve wouldn't charge people to fly them to safety!  But Steve says he never jokes about money, and her illusion disintegrates.

The British subjects call Steve all kinds of names, accuse him of blackmail, and are altogether terribly unreasonable.  Maybe it's because I'm an American too, like Steve, but I really don't understand why they aren't willing to pay money to take the last plane out of a city that's about to be overrun by bandits who are basically terrorists.  It's Steve's plane, he's lost a lot of money because of Singh taking all his cargo, and it's only logical he should want to make that up.  But they revile him for this, causing him to raise his prices repeatedly until they throw him out.  This makes me very angry, and I don't think it's just because Steve is played by Alan Ladd.  Really, they turn into a vicious and pigheaded mob, all trapped in a weird illusion that they have some kind of moral high ground and he will have to give them what they want.

Various things go very wrong, ending with Steve and Singh facing off over the confiscated guns and other property that Steve has lost thanks to Sing.  Steve pleads with Singh to use the machine guns and ammunition to defend the city, whether or not he ever pays Steve for them.  Singh refuses.  (There's yet another photo of Ghandi in this shot -- he crops up in a lot of Singh's scenes, almost like the prime minister worships the man.)

Steve buys a Jeep from Singh and prepares to flee the city, hoping to escape the descending bandits.  He seeks Joan out, giving her a helping hand in navigating the palace, where, all the people left in the city are sheltering now.  She's happy to accept his helping hand until he speaks, and she realizes who he is.  Then she cold-shoulders him immediately.

There are a lot of shots like the one above where Steve gives Joan the most loving, tender, wistful looks, knowing she can't see him.  He allows himself to feel and look vulnerable in her presence because she can't actually tell how sweet and vulnerable he is.  It reminds me a lot of some of my favorite moments in And Now Tomorrow (1944) when Ladd's character says very truthful (and often funny) things to a deaf woman when she isn't looking at him, knowing it's safe to say the truth as long as she can't see and read his lips.  It's more subtle here, but really well done, the willingness to be truthful only when no one knows it.

This shot is just here because Alan Ladd looks so lovely in it.

Joan takes refuge at a piano, but Steve follows her.  He tries to convince her to come with him in his Jeep, along with her grandfather.  She refuses.

Steve cannot understand her refusal.  Why would she sacrifice her own safety to stay with her friends and support them?  This is another big theme in the movie: that money, property, and even lofty ideals are expendable; only people are worth fighting for.  Joan has this figured out already, but Steve and Singh do not.

Steve leaves in a huff.  And ends up captured by the bandits.  He claims he was just trying to meet up with the rebel leader, Newah Khan (Philip Bourneuf), to seek safe passage from him.

Khan is charming and reasonable, which puts Steve off balance.

Khan even promises Steve safe passage and allows him to telephone a friend to fly a plane out that can carry all the British people to safety.  Khan says he doesn't want to fight the British, and they are free to leave.  He sends Steve off with a smile and promises of friendship.

Steve is no fool -- he knows he can't trust Newah Khan, but he's going to try to get everyone on that plane anyway.  He rushes back to the palace, where Joan still gives him the cold shoulder because she is still mourning the loss of her illusionary Steve.  He's still acting in his own best interest, even if he's trying to protect and help her and her grandfather, and even the other British expats who have been exceedingly rude and even cruel toward him.  She's sure Steve has ulterior motives and won't speak to him for more than a few minutes.

Part of Steve's deal with Newah Khan is that Prime Minister Singh will go speak to the bandits in their camp before midnight.  Singh goes gladly, confident he can make a peaceful deal with them.  He returns looking like he's aged at least a decade.  He seems broken, staggered, unsure -- and we soon learn he's been physically harmed more than anyone first understood.  His illusion of peaceful resistance is crumbling, and he's coming undone in every way.

Steve's friend does arrive, but in a plane that's too small -- only a handful of people can leave on it.  The British men heroically send off all their women, except for Joan.  She refuses to leave her grandfather.  And she especially doesn't want to go because Steve will be on that plane, and she is never going to go anywhere with Steve.  He has shattered her naive and childlike illusions about life, and he has broken her heart, and she's ready to die at her grandfather's side.

Ahhh, but Steve didn't leave on the plane.  He sent all the women to safety in Bombay and came back.  Why?  Because he has finally realized that people are more important than money or things or even safety.  He couldn't leave without Joan, so he came back to be with her for as long as he could.

If you don't want SPOILAGE about the ending (and my favorite part of the whole film, which is so delicious when it's a surprise), please SKIP from here to below the words THE END.

Steve and Joan seek out her grandfather, and Steve asks him to marry them.  They have only hours left in this world, maybe less, but he wants them to be united for that brief amount of time.  (And the above photo is soooooo adorable, isn't it?  How sweet and shy they both look?)

Dr. Willougby unites them in holy matrimony for as long as they both shall live.  You might think they're trying to build the illusion that they will live for many years, but everyone here is very clear-eyed.  This is not a moment of hope or of illusion.  It's a way to cement their commitment to stand by each other to the very end.  It's Steve's way of convincing Joan once and for all that he values her more than anything, and that he will never leave her.  She will never be alone again.

When they've been pronounced man and wife, Steve takes Joan's face in his hands this time, and gently kisses away her tears.  It's the gentlest, loveliest, softest kissing scene you have ever seen.

The bandits surround the palace, ready to kill everyone inside.  The British expats and a few remaining Indians have armed themselves with antique weapons, but everyone knows their defense can't last long.  Steve shields Joan with his body as he takes his place with the other defenders, and she clings to him, eyes wide open, ready to die at his side.

One last time, she runs her fingers over his face, seeing him the best way she can.  Steve is anguished, despairing.  

The doors begin to cave.  Several characters have died already by this point, and it's only a matter of time before the rest are slaughtered.

But!  One last person has learned that, while violence in pursuit of money or power or territory can be avoided, when you avoid using violence to defend people, you are clinging to an illusion of peace, not real peace.  Singh releases the confiscated machine guns in the nick of time, and he and Steve step forward against the bandits together, defending the people it's their duty and privilege to protect to the best of their abilities.  And, although the film ends right there, we can be confident they succeed in fighting off the bandits long enough for Steve's friend with the airplane to bring back another plane and rescue them all.

It's kind of an abrupt ending, but I don't hate it.

Is this movie family friendly?  No cussing, no smut, not even any actual kisses, and all the violence is non-gory in the best early 1950s tradition.  There are some character deaths, and those may distress young viewers.  But that's about the only quibble I can see anyone having with it.

Since it's Alan Ladd's birthday, I'll share a few screencaps here at the end that didn't make it into my review.

We rarely get to see Ladd barefoot, so I just had to grab this shot of him in the tub with his feet stuck up over the end, because it's just cute and funny.  And I find bare feet endearing.

The rest of these are simply really nice shots of him that I can't resist sharing just because they're so nice :-)

Happy Alan Ladd's birthday to you!