Crappy film

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is an adventure story from the British Raj that can be viewed enjoyably and without embarrassment by all groups. Ten years earlier, it would have been full of imperialist clichés. Ten years later, it would have been just as full of marxist clichés.But 1959 was the right moment to film a straightforward goodies-and-baddies epic, and the film is stronger for not trying to project a political message. It was also an Indian summer for Kenneth More, so much a man of the 50's that he was doomed to be eclipsed by the disturbing new waves that were just round the corner.A maharajah's palace is threatened with fire and the sword, and he entrusts his small son to a British army captain to smuggle him to safety. Arriving at the nearest garrison, the captain finds that the last train has just left, and that he must try to assemble his own from an ancient tank-engine and some assorted rolling stock. In his favour is that the besieging enemy are not expecting an escape by rail. Against him is the rickety condition of the train, whose faulty whistle suddenly blows at the wrong moment. With nothing to lose, he orders full steam, and they're able to smash their way through.This is one example of the skillful plotting of the film. And there are plenty of others in the course of a 300-mile rail journey with the interesting mixed-bag of characters who have managed to get on the train. Lauren Bacall as the young prince's governess can't help looking rather out of place in Kipling's India - and she and More don't really have the chemistry - but she tells us that her father in Arizona brought her up to use a gun, and sure enough, this comes to play its part in the story. The other characters are different enough from each other to provide the conflict that makes for satisfying drama. The governor's wife, who has been torn away from her husband at his insistence. An arms dealer whose ethics are sharply questioned. A reporter who has blackmailed his way into the party, and is mistrusted by all, except a naive civil servant who later gets a chance to make good his mistake.One important and engaging character is the engine itself, 'Empress of India', or 'Victoria' as it (she) is affectionately called by its long-serving driver Gupta. As for him, he goes so overboard as the devoted servant of the Raj that his dialogue sounds a little suspect. Did they really say things like "in a very soon moment, sahib"? The part is played by I.S. Johar, who also used to mimic this kind of talk in comic theatre, and we wonder if he might be doing it here. Still, he puts his heart and soul into the part, and the relationship between him and his engine is heartwarming to watch.On the negative side, the battle scenes at the beginning leave us unsure who is fighting whom. And there are occasional lines that clearly play to the juvenile audience that helped to take the film to No.6 in that year's popularity table ("We've got to save his life, if it's the last thing we do."/"It may very well be the last thing we do.") As not all Americans would connect with the phrase 'North West Frontier', it was re-titled 'Flame Over India' for US exposure, a title that was just thought silly by one particular American, who was none other than... Miss Lauren Bacall!

North West Frontier (1959)Also known as "Flame Over India."For starters, you have to ignore that rather boring first few minutes, and the awful acting in it, including the routine battle scenes quickly thrown at you. It's all set up for the main themes of this movie set in an India still under British control, circa 1905. The real historical import of all this is that it's set in that part of India that was largely Muslim and is now modern Pakistan. But part of what happens here is to show the brutality of the Muslims toward the Hindu minority, all in an effort for self-determination.There are lots of conventions at work here--Hollywood ones. Like the train being chased not by American Indians but by rebel Muslims on horseback, and they are picked off by the men on the train like, well, Indians. It's a weird deja vu moment in an otherwise very British film (not Hollywood after all).The British are a target here, actually, to some of the writing, as are men in general, all from the sharp tongue of Lauren Bacall, who is perfectly the strong American woman. Next to her is an understated, convincing British soldier played by Kenneth More.This is actually an ambitious movie, for all its relative obscurity now. There are harrowing scenes of a city under siege, and of a massacre of hundreds of bodies very elaborately staged (Bacall walks through the corpses in shot after shot), and a sequence high atop a railroad bridge. Of course, it's more than politics and warfare and adventure. That is, there's the slowly simmering love story, and it's not an overly sentimental one. It might seem an odd thing to mention here but the filming--the photography--is really really good, interesting and subtle. It's widescreen color (though not Technicolor) and the camera refuses to be static, even in simple scenes with a group of people chatting on the train. It pans and rolls forward and back with fluid, tactile sensitivity. The sets and scenery are wonderful--shot in the deserts of Spain (not India, except a couple establishing shots), with a vintage train car on the old rails. The interior stuff (in the cars) are partly done in a studio in England with back projection of scenery out the window, but it's all very convincing stuff. The cameraman is the under-appreciated British cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, who became one of the industry experts at back projection (and the revolutionary "front projection" of 1968--he was key to the filming "2001," with Kubrick, and its fabulous visuals). He made a whole slew of films in the same sensitive style seen here, finally winning Oscars toward the end of his life (including "Tess" posthumously). I'd recommend this film on the photography alone.You might say this is a perfectly realized film, and what holds it back for modern audiences is its relative ease and calm, and perhaps a history now forgotten. It's a careful film with great nuance. The acting is first rate, though some of the characters are "types" in the same way Ford's "Stagecoach" played with types caught together in a confined space. This film has its expansive moments for sure, but in a way it's a ship of fools situation. What it also lacks is perhaps complexity to the plot, which sounds weird with all the complicated sets and filming, but there is a linear process of the main group of characters trying to escape to their safety, obstacle after obstacle. There are some more archetypal moments straight from an American Western (a fight on the roof of the train, a woman with a gun to the rescue) but it's all part of the excitement. The "Stagecoach" echo appears in the form of a baby, too, halfway through.In case you are unsure of the British sentiment embedded here, and the foreshadowing of the future that was known at the 1958 filming (a decade after the Brits were booted out of India), watch the last scene carefully. And remember the train is called "Victoria." And check out the photography even on the last gorgeous shot, turning and pulling up and back and turning again. Nice stuff!

Rebellion is breaking out in India and all that stands in the way of religious and political chaos, not to mention British control, is a six-year-old Hindu prince and the unflagging confidence of Captain Scott (Kenneth More). Charged with bringing the boy safely from a small, fortified hill station to the British base at Kalapur 300 miles away, Captain Scott will need every bit of his resourcefulness, energy, ingenuity and pluck. The year is 1905 and Muslim tribes in India's north west territories are rising up against the Hindu princes and their British masters. Young prince Kishan is seen as a symbol of order and justice. If the rebels can kill him, there will be uprisings against the British which they may not be able to control. But how to get the prince to Kalapur? The last refugee trains have left and attempting the journey by horseback through enemy territory would be madness. But then Captain Scott remembers there was an old, derelict steam locomotive, The Empress of India, in the train sheds. Could it be put back into service? He calls upon his friend, Gupta (I. S. Johar), who assures him in broken English that his locomotive will not fail Captain Scott and that Gupta, himself, will run it. In a trice Gupta brings needed maintenance to The Empress and Scott finds himself loading an assorted group of passengers onto the one passenger car. There is Lady Wyndham (Ursula Jeans), the governor's wife; Peters (Eugene Deckers), an arms dealer whose weapons now most likely arm the rebels; Mr. Bridie (Wilfred Hyde-White), a diplomat and old India hand; and Van Layden (Herbert Lom), a reporter who has no love for the British. Most importantly, there is the prince and his American governess, Catherine Wyatt (Lauren Bacall). On this desperate journey, Captain Scott and this group of passengers will encounter massacres, the old steam engine's urgent need for water, the hard work of replacing rails, the tense clamber over a blown bridge with only the rails remaining, then the careful driving of the engine across those shifting, sagging rails, and the mass attacks of Muslims on horseback racing to capture the train and the prince. More troubling, Scott discovers that his group harbors a traitor, someone determined to either kill the prince or see that the boy is killed. Only the best traditions of British military leadership, exemplified by the publicly confident but privately worried Captain Scott, plus the vital assistance he receives from a number of the passengers, enable North West Frontier to have a happy ending. For Captain Scott, the ending is even happier. Not only has he fulfilled his mission, it appears that he and Catherine Wyatt will have a future together. This film is a throwback to the classic movies about the British Empire and the quality of the brave men who made the Empire possible. It's all fiction, of course, but it's greatly entertaining. Films like Drums and The Four Feathers reassured many that the British Empire would always be around and that the men who made it work were...well, gentlemen; that is, dedicated to bringing order, opportunity and justice to the natives as only British gentlemen could, and who always dressed for dinner. While this movie arrived in the theaters as the underside of empire was becoming known, it still tells a cracking good yarn. There is a bit too much exposition, in my opinion, offering justification for and against the Empire's rule in India (and the pro side wins the argument most of the time). It also seemed to me that the villain of the movie is far too easily identified. One final weakness is that the pairing of More and Bacall doesn't really work; they have such different personalities that their attraction for each other and their eventually pairing just doesn't strike any sparks for me. Still, the movie offers some grand adventures, great scenery, a journey on a steam train, brave derring-do, a typically forceful and optimistic performance by Kenneth More, and a nice reminder of why adventure stories are so much fun.

Looked up this film doing some quick research on Kenneth More who played the Titanic's Second Officer Charles H. Lightoller , in "A Night to Remember." At the end of that film, Morre's character said something like, we can never be sure of anything again. That comment came to mind in connection with a brief piece I'm writing for my website on plans to develop Ground Zero. The sense of responsibility, reliability and steadfastness that More displayed in Northwest Frontier makes this movie worth seeing if only to remind us that once upon a time the qualities displayed by More in his films were considered not only praiseworthy, but an expression of simple decency to be emulated. The Google listing for Charles H. Lightoller includes a website (see third listing) that has a long article on Lightoller and the Titanic that concludes with the words on the face of a bronze plaque said to rest near the tragic ships' stern:"The fifteen hundred souls lost here still speak, reminding us always that the unthinkable can happen, but for vigilance, humility and compassion." My hunch is Kenneth More would agree these words are also appropriate to the souls lost on 9-11.