11.19.2012

John Huston: The Man Who Would Be King


The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra (It Happened One Night), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In this post LR Simon reviews The Man Who Would Be King (1975).


John Huston wanted to make The Man Who Would Be King in the 1950s with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. After Bogart died in 1957, and Gable in 1960, the two leads went through several possible casting choices before Huston finally settled on Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

Huston adapted the Rudyard Kipling story of two ex-non-commissioned officers of the Indian Army in British India. Peachy Carnehan (Caine) and Danny Dravot (Connery) decide to travel through Afghanistan to Kafiristan, where they plan to become kings. This sounds preposterous at first to Kipling (Christopher Plummer), but he shows them maps of the territory to help them, anyway.

The friendship between Carnehan and Dravot forms the heart of the story; consequently, casting was critical in making the film a success. Connery and Caine seem an unlikely partnership initially, but they perform their characters’ banter exquisitely. Even though their quest feels doomed from the outset, their optimism and cheekiness make the audience want to follow their adventures.

The Man Who Would Be King ended a period in Huston’s career when he was in less demand than he had been after The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The high adventure reminded audiences of how good a relatively simple story in the hands of a master could be. Huston made some changes to the story, and he exposed moral complexity in the source material that might not be obvious on a casual reading. All of the characters have flaws, whether it’s the sense of superiority displayed by the English characters, or the sometimes brutal superstitiousness of the native characters, or the questionable ethics of the two leads.

Although the story is superficially simple, the complexity of the characters give the movie unexpected depth and sophistication.


References:

Call It Magic: The Making of The Man Who Would Be King

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