Friday, July 25 (7:00 pm) Library of Congress, Pickford Theater
National Film Registry
King of the Khyber Rifles (20th Century-Fox, 1953) Dir Henry King.
Wrt Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts, Harry Kleiner. With Tyrone Power, Terry
Moore, Michael Rennie, Guy Rolfe, John Justin, Frank Lackteen. (100
min, Technicolor, CinemaScope, 35mm)
Talbot Mundy's name is synonymous with fantastic adventure in the
mysterious east. When Fox brought his most famous novel to the screen a
second time, it was transformed into a widescreen Tyrone Power vehicle
infused with a social consciousness story set against the Sepoy
rebellion of 1857. Yet the film also resembled plans for a film Mundy
had hoped to script in the 1930's which ran into prohibitive British
censorship. King of the Khyber Rifles inaugurated a cycle of colonial
adventure films with a revisionist interpretation of the imperialist
ethic that Hollywood had celebrated in earlier decades. This screening
will feature a special introduction by MBRS Library staffer Brian Taves
(PhD, University of Southern California), author of a new book on
Mundy.
|