Clive of India

Put this, I guess, in the category of 'movies no one will ever see again.' But it was there in the Penn library and the subject of the movie is probably also the namesake of our cat, Clive (who was rescued from feraldom by a fellow graduate student who specializes in the history of the subcontinent), so how could we not watch it? It was fairly enjoyable in a campy 'get a load of that 1930s style of acting' kind of way, and the script clipped along at a fantastic rate until it got bogged down in the emotional struggles within Clive's marriage. But even with the slower latter third of the movie, the minimalism of the narrative was breathtaking. The pattern was usually a scene or two showcasing an example of Clive's indomitable courage and übermensch will, followed by words on the screen and swelling orchestral music telling you what the result of said courage and will had been--Clive avenged the deaths of the Black Hole of Calcutta (hooray!); Clive made all of India safe for British commerce (huzzah!); & etc. The acting by the leads--Ronald Coleman as Clive and Loretta Young as Margaret--was fairly good, though the movie seldom required them to move beyond being courageous and British; the native evil-doers and bureaucratic buffoons Clive had to overcome were high camp. I did not recognize Cesar Romero, beneath a thick layer of dark makeup and a stringy beard, as a native ally of Clive (thank you, IMDB for pointing him out). The movie charged through Clive's life like a war elephant at the Battle of Plassey (the single battle scene in the movie), scarcely stopping to contemplate the moment when Clive and Margaret leave their dying first-born infant behind in England to return to India, or when Clive begins his addiction to opium. The fact that Clive tried and failed to kill himself twice in his younger days is mentioned many times in the early part of the movie. The fact that Clive finally succeeded in killing himself barely a year after his trial is not mentioned at all. But it certainly fits his character that a man of such determination would not leave something he had started undone, but see it through to the end or die trying. In this case, both.