Wed 10 Feb 2010
SHE. Hammer Films, UK, 1965. MGM, US, 1965. Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, John Richardson, Rosenda Monteros. Screenplay: David T. Chantler, based on the novel by H. Rider Haggard. Director: Robert Day.
I missed seeing this movie when it first came out — I don’t remember why, or what I was doing at the time that was more important. I had seen Dr. No, and, well, I imagine that if I said that I’d have liked to have seen more, I think you’d know what I mean.
One of my more immediate acquisitions from Amazon-UK arrived last week, a huge box set of Hammer Films, and She was among them. It ws, in fact, the one at the top of a stack of some 20 odd DVDs, and it was the first to be plunked into my new multi-region player.
I probably should have seen the movie in 1965, or whenever it played in the US. I might have enjoyed it more back then, in the heyday of my youth.
My opinion now? Disappointing, in a word. I found it to be not Very Good, alas, and while definitely not Bad, far from what I had for so long anticipated.
I have been told that Hammer spent more on the budget for this film than any other at that point in time. That may be, but the story is dismal and the spectacle is, for the most part, hardly any better, and in only a couple of instances (one being the grand entrance into the Lost City) does it come even close to overwhelming.
I’ve never read Haggard’s novel (and I don’t want to embarrass myself by saying that I’ve never read anything by Haggard, so I won’t), so I can’t compare book with film, but for me, if you were to tell me that they made up the script as they went along, I’d believe you.
John Richardson, the handsome and rather hunky primary star (but among the least well-known of the ones I listed above, I’m sure, and the chap on the right, below) plays Leo Vincey, recently demobbed in the Middle East after the Great War (WWI), who in appearance is the re-incarnation of the man She (who must be obeyed) Kallikrates, whom she killed ages before in a fit of jealous rage.
Now that’s she’s immortal (and by the way, you’re right, Ursula Andress does indeed play She, a role she was born to play), she wants him back, and after several trials and tests that he passes, will not accept No as an answer. Things turn out badly from here.
Ursula Andress (whose dialogue was dubbed for her) is beautiful, majestic, and exotic, but now as I’ve grown older, I realize that she was never meant for anyone as plebeian as I. Truth be told, I have much more in common with the slave girl Ustane (Rosenda Monteros) who in turn is completely smitten by Leo. Ninety percent of her dialogue consists of her fervently saying, “My Leo.” If only she knew me back then. Leo would have been long forgotten.
Ah, the stuff dreams are made of!
February 11th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Hammer’s SHE is a relatively faithful if CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED version of the Haggard book, not as good as the early talkie with Randolph Scott, Nigel Bruce, and Helen Gahagan (great fx for the time) which moves the action to the arctic, or the silent Brit version with Betty Blythe that has title cards actually written by Haggard, but okay and relatively faithful to the novel though much of the Jungian undercurrent gets lost with Andress’s impressive cleavage (ironic there is more nudity and near nudity in the silent from 1912) and less than impressive delivery.
She’s great to look at, but hardly the ethereal SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED, and Peter Cushing is wasted. John Richardson did better in ONE MILLION YEARS BC where he had no dialogue. The sequel VENGEANCE OF SHE is worse still, but Veronica Vetri is nice to look at.
Truth is I’m not sure a really good and faithful film of the novel is possible. As Jung points out it is a sort of fever dream that despite its crudities (and in some case because of them) you respond to at a level somewhere below the conscious mind. What ever else the book and its sequels are unique in that way.
That quality you mention of things seeming to be made up as they go along however is true to the novel, it’s just that the film can’t convey the dreamlike quality of the book.
On the general theme, you might want to check out the classic L’ATANTIDE based on the Pierre Benoit novel (there is some controversy as to whether Benoit “borrowed” Haggard’s ideas since there is evidence he never read or heard of SHE), a dream like film, its over the top remake as SIRENS OF ATLANTIS with Maria Montez, Jean Pierre Aumont, and Dennis O’Keefe, or the Edgar Ulmer version JOURNEY BENEATH THE DESERT with Jean Louis Trignant and Haya Hareet (BEN HUR) which updates the story to the nuclear age.
On the same general theme DESERT LEGION with Alan Ladd, Arlene Dahl, and Akim Timiroff based on the novel by pulp writer Georges Surdez) is a more straight forward telling of the same sort of thing minus the Jungian archetypes. Ladd’s a Foreign Legion officer who follows an evil bandit to a lost city and Princess Dahl.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Welcome back, David! It’s certainly good to hear from you again.
I was quite disappointed in SHE, the Hammer film, as I’m pretty sure my comments suggested. I was expecting something more spectacular, obviously, and in spite of the bigger than usual budget for Hammer, I didn’t get it.
Nor did I particularly understand the ending. Was it the same as in the book, that going through the Flame of Eternal Life twice is a Bad Idea?
If it’s the same as in Haggard’s novel, then I’ll take back some of my criticism of the film. But with Fantasy Fiction in general, print or film, even though it’s fantasy, I’m always asking Why? Who made up that Rule?
— Steve
February 11th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
The fatal second trip through the blue flame is indeed the ending of the book. The now immortal Leo is now in the place of Ayesha and must wait for her next incarnation and hope to find her (which he and Holly do in AYESHA, THE RETURN OF SHE). As for why the second trip through the flame destroys, again I think you have to go back to the Jungian interpretation of the novel.
Approaching it from a logical point of view like a mystery or science fiction isn’t the best way to read the book. SHE is very much the product of a sort of fever dream filled with archetypes and symbolism. It is Ayesha’s hubris that destroys her the second time she goes through the Blue Flame, that and the cruelty that has made her unfit to be with her lover in this incarnation. She must be destroyed and begin again to be fit for her immortal love.
Ayesha is the ultimate invocation of the anima or female spirit in Jung’s interpretation — beautiful, infinitely desirable, cruel, jealous, and deadly in her desirability. Leo on the other hand is a blank slate — he is no Kallikrites, her immortal lover — but she believes she can erase the pale Leo personality and bring her lover back in him.
In later books Ayesha encounters Allan Quartermain (SHE AND ALLAN) and we are taken back to the past to view her through the eyes of Odysseus in Egypt after his return to Ithica (THE WORLD”S DESIRE).
But you can see where no matter how much Hammer spent on the film it was hard to capture the book on screen. Still for a rousing adventure film catch the Randolph Scott/Helen Gahagan film (from the people who gave us KING KONG)directed by Irving Pichel with a rousing Max Steiner score, and for the novel itself the 1912 version with Betty Blythe is faithful and mesmeric and more technically proficient than you might expect, with Haggard’s own title cards as a bonus.
But if you want fantasy to have rules try the UNKNOWN school created by John W. Campbell. Classics of that school include Jack Williamson’s DARKER THAN YOU THINK, Eric Frank Russell’s SINISTER BARRIER, Fritz Leiber’s CONJURE WIFE, de Camp and Pratt’s THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER, and L. Ron Hubbard’s SLAVES OF SLEEP, and to some extent Campbell’s WHO GOES THERE? (THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) all of which posit worlds where fantasy has rules — and half the fun is figuring what they are. More recently Larry Niven’s THE MAGIC GOES AWAY follows the Campbell model.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
David
That answers that question, the one about the ending. Thanks! I have a few other things that puzzled me, but they aren’t as key as this one was.
I’ll have to go back and watch the ending again, though. Your additional explanation makes sense, but if much of it was provided by the film itself, I missed it. But nobody catches everything in a film the first time.
You watch a film the first time for the story itself, and when you’re concentrating on that, you always miss some of the dialogue or some of what each of the actors are doing, maybe not so that you’re really losing anything essential, but sometimes you do. So the second time, if there is a second time, you fill in all of the things you missed the first time.
The third time through, you know the story and you know what’s going to happen, so you begin to watch and you see what the director is doing. Long takes, close-ups, head shots, all of the tricks of the trade.
Now that I’ve written this, maybe I should go back and change all those “you”s to I, but I’m going be lazy and I won’t. But this is how watching a movie works for me.
Most movies, of course, I end up watching only once, and so does almost everyone. But now that we’ve discussed it, I’m convinced that SHE (the Hammer film) deserves a second watching. I’m also going to find a copy of the 1935 version with Helen Gahagan and Randolph Scott (not to forget Nigel Bruce) and watch that as well. (I have a feelingthat I may seen it at some time in the far distant past, but that is all it is, a feeling.)
As for rules, yes, indeed, stories such as those of the UNKNOWN school are exactly what I look for in fantasy fiction. The rules can be a secret and they may have to be deciphered, but they have to be there.
I also want the use of magic to have side effects, a physical drain on the person using it, perhaps, or something that says the author knows something about the Conservation of Mass and Energy.
I also want vampires, werewolves and zombies to be scary as hell, and not romantic figures, as is all the rage, if I may pardoned for saying so.
— Steve
February 12th, 2010 at 7:08 am
I agree about the movies and the monsters. The only flaw to the otherwise fine Coppola BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA was turning Dracula —- in Stoker’s novel a beast with foetid breath and metaphor for venereal disease and foreign infection —- into a tragic romantic figure damned by a great love rather than his own cruelty and hubris. Only Christopher Lee and to some extent Louis Jourdan seemed to play Dracula as a monster rather than a Byronic leading man — Max de Winter crossed with Bluebeard rather than Satan.
I prefer fantasy to have rules and consequences too. Stories and novels like Heinlien’s MAGIC INC., “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”, James Gunn’s THE MAGICIANS (which is also a good screwball private eye novel), the British Charles Williams ecclesiastical thrillers, and even Dennis Wheatley’s occult novels all posit worlds where magic —- black and white —- has consequences. One of the strengths of the Harry Potter books is that for all the joyous childlike celebration of magic there is at their core —- as in Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Lewis Narnia —- a recognition of the danger and the darkness lurking in the shadows of such evil.
Take away the evil and the sense of something dangerous and corrupt in these tales of witches, werewolves, and vampires and you deprive them of their true power and import. The Monster in FRANKENSTEIN may be tragic, but Mary Shelley never forgets he is also monstrous. Such creations can be Byronic and tragic, but they must also be damned and retain that cachet of unrestrained evil.
Today’s panting adolescent vampires and werewolves too often fail in that — they have taken away the very subtext that gives them their primal powers by turning them into hormonal teens more a metaphor for acne, angst, and puberty than for the dark animal lurking in man’s heart, soul, and mind.
February 12th, 2010 at 7:13 am
I should put in another plug for the RKO version with Scott, Bruce and Gahagen, a lavish pulp cover brought to the screen.
February 12th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Dan’s right about the RKO SHE. Glorious pulp brought to life and surprisingly manages to capture some of the dark brooding sense of the Haggard novel as well. Bruce may be a revelation to those who only know him from the Holmes films as the bumbling elderly Watson.
Thankfully the film was restored in the nineties and the DVD from KINO is really quite handsome. It’s one of the best films of it’s type of the era easily comparable to films like THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, CHANDU THE MAGICIAN, and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, all splendid visual examples of Hollywood pulp at its best. It may not rank quite up there with KING KONG, but it show signs of the same imagination and style as well as the commitment to pure entertainment.
Director Irving Pichel, a Welsh transplant, was a triple threat, as actor, director, and narrator. He’s the evil helper in DRACULA’S DAUGHTER and his rich and melodious voice narrates John Ford’s Oscar winning HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY.
Helen Gahagan (Douglas), who plays the title role, is probably better known as the victim of Richard Nixon’s first dirty tricks campaign when he defeated her for public office in California. She manages to convey something of the mystery of Ayesha as well as the cruelty.
Randolph Scott makes a two fisted Leo Vincey, and his easy grace on screen helps lift this above the norm. He’s equally good in the action scenes as in the quieter moments.
This is easily one of the best films of it’s type made in this era. If you’ve never seen it I think it will come as a surprise.
And while you are at it also check out CHANDU THE MAGICIAN (the feature, not the serial) with Edmund Lowe and Bela Lugosi (who confusingly plays Chandu in the serial) another splendid pulp adventure co-directed by William Cameron Menzies. Visually these two films are stunning — in some ways throwbacks to the great silent cinema of the fantastic, but with modern pace, sound, and for the time state of the art special effects that still have a certain charm often missing in today’s CGI hits.
May 10th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
I first saw SHE in the local theater back in 1965. I wasn’t yet a teenager so the sexual overtones that so many comment on were lost on me then. I saw the movie as an adventure-fantasy piece of entertainment — and such movies were popular back then in the early and mid-1960s. And that is the point: SHE was never intended to be a piece of cinematic art but rather as a piece of cinematic entertainment for all ages. Looking at SHE now, 45 years later, I naturally see some things that could have been done better but I also see the spirit of the movie which was to simply entertain the audience in an adventure story and harmless fantasy manner. I seriously feel the film was helped very much by the presence of solid performers as Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Andre Morell, and others. I recommend SHE to viewers of all ages who don’t have their cinematic expectations raised too high and just want to relax and have some movie going fantasy fun. This film, by the way, is one of the better Hammer productions in my opinion.
April 30th, 2021 at 6:41 pm
Ursula andress was so wonderful in the film she 1965 and with wonderful supporting cast the location Palestine and the lost city of kuma was so breath-taking