WEE WILLIE WINKIE (1937)
Starring: Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith, June Lang, Michael Whalen, Cesar Romero, Constance Collier, Douglas Scott
Writers: Ernest Pascal, Julien Josephson (based on the story by Rudyard Kipling)
Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller
Music: Alfred Newman
Editor: Walter Thompson
Sepiatone with blue tinted sequences; 1h 40m. 1.37:1 presentation.
Released on: June 25, 1937 by 20th Century Fox.
My experience: Ford at Fox DVD box set.
There are some things that achieve mass popularity that years later one looks back on and wonders what everybody was thinking. Pet rocks, 1980s hairstyles, Tamagotchis, that kind of thing. Same thing goes for celebrities.
The celebrity whose popularity I never quite understood was Shirley Temple. Nowadays her fame has for the most part passed on; apart from Heidi or The Little Princess, or her later post-pubescent films with name directors and actors (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, Fort Apache), they go mostly unwatched in this day and age.
In part her popularity was due to the Depression; in those dark days of misery and hardship people went to the movies to escape, and an effervescent smiling child full of positivity and good cheer who also looked cute (but not too professional) singing and dancing was just what the country needed. And 20th Century Fox capitalized on that, putting her to work in as many movies as possible before she grew too old, with Shirley appearing in roughly four movies a year for the greater part of the 1930s. In 1934 at the height of her popularity, she appeared in a total of ten films, although "only" six of them were anything more than a cameo!
They also capitalized on her popularity by putting her in movies directed by studio hands like David Butler and William Seiter, who put her front and center and would cut away to the star for every cute little reaction possible, and give her as many big musical numbers as she could carry, even if her voice (at least to modern ears) was quite grating. But when Fox contract director John Ford returned to the studio after two pictures at RKO, somebody -- perhaps Darryl F. Zanuck -- had the idea to team their top star with their top director. Aside from a role in Henry Hathaway's Now and Forever, it would be Shirley's first film with a name helmsman.
What 20th Century Fox didn't realize -- or, perhaps they did? -- is that John Ford marches to the beat of his own drum. Far be it for him to treat the star of his film with the kid gloves others had, or follow the same unofficial directorial working rules; in Wee Willie Winkie Ford treats Temple as just another actor, which works marvellously well for both her performance and the film. We still get a few cutesy antics to keep the crowd happy, but otherwise she's just another actor in the frame, albeit the lead character. No songs to be sung here, with the exception of a tremulous version of "Auld Lang Syne" that, perhaps because of the lack of schmaltzy musical numbers, works quite well. The cutaways to Temple's reaction shots are few and far between, and always tastefully done. In short, he made an actor with a very time-specific style turn in a performance that would be watchable in any era.
Temple plays Priscilla Williams, who travels from America to Northern India in 1897 with her mother Joyce (June Lang) after being left destitute by the death of her father. They aim to meet up with her grandfather, Colonel Williams (C. Aubrey Smith). There she makes friends with her grandfather's subordinates, such as Sgt. Donald MacDuff (Victor McLaglen), Capt. Bibberbeigh (Gavin Muir), Pipe Major Sneath (Clyde Cook), and Lt. Coppy Brandes (Michael Whalen), who takes a fancy to Priscilla's mother. Trouble arises when Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero) escapes from jail, putting the family and the company in danger. Constance Collier shows up as nosy busybody Mrs. Allardyce, and Douglas Scott plays a young boy called Mott.
The film starts off quite interestingly. From what I knew about it, and the writer of its original story, Rudyard Kipling, I figured we were in for a rah-rah, Anglophilic military adventure along the lines of The Four Feathers or Gunga Din. In the opening conversation between Shirley and her mother, the question of expansionism and, to that effect, imperialism is brought up. This being a 1930s film, it doesn't delve into the matter too deeply, but the fact that it is questioned, even if by a little girl, is quite interesting. Priscilla continues to question the necessity of war throughout the film, accosting her grandfather and even, in an interesting turn of events, Khoda Khan, about why they feel the need to keep fighting. Ford's early idealism -- which would largely disappear from his work in the post-war years -- is on full display as the film marches towards its climax.
That's not to say that the film is free from the racist tendencies of its time. The character of Mohammet Dihn, played by Chinese-American actor Willie Fung (who, by the way, is billed tenth in the credits behind Collier -- even though his character is an important character and hers is basically a cameo -- and child actor Douglas Scott) is grating in its widely smiling, bowing and scraping, broken English insensitivity. The way his character is disposed of needs to be seen to be believed. And of course most of the hill tribesmen are played either by white actors or Latinos like Cesar Romero (who, to his credit, plays his role brilliantly). But all this is to be expected, and only slightly took me out of the movie.
Wee Willie Winkie was shot in sepiatone, with blue-tinted sequences for the nighttime scenes, and it works wonderfully well in a Traffic sort of way, as the sepia really brings out the feel of the scorching Indian sun, and of course the blue helps the nighttime feel. There is a straight silver nitrate version on the flipside of the DVD, which I sampled, and it didn't work as well for me. The film has solid direction by Ford, with some nicely composed images, and strong acting by Temple, McLaglen, and especially C. Aubrey Smith, who by this point in his career was cinematic shorthand for the Old Guard British military establishment.
Ford has always been a master when it comes to comedy and sentiment, and this film has both of these, from McLaglen teaching his troops how to box to the bedside death of a main character. While I don't know if I'd rush to watch it again in the near future, I found it quite entertaining, and am pleased to finally say I have thoroughly enjoyed a Shirley Temple film.
Seven precocious prodigies out of ten.
