As India's 1.2 billion population and liberalised market are precipitating world interest in India, the lens with which the country is viewed by the West, has also changed
Jon Favreau’s recent film, The Jungle Book, based on Rudyard Kipling’s timeless classic novel, The Jungle Book, has again put the spotlight on Western images of India and Orientalism. It is, of course, the story of Mowgli, an orphaned ‘man-cub’, brought up by wolves in the jungle. While Baloo, the bear, wants his buddy Mowgli to remain in the jungle, Bagheera, the panther, wants him to return to his own kind in the ‘man-village’, as Shere Khan is out to kill him. It uses a superbly evocative combination of live action and animation. The absolutely delightful The Jungle Book animation film of 1967, which is engraved in our collective hearts, was directed by the little-known Wolfgang Reitherman, the American filmmaker and key Disney animator. (Both films are produced by Disney; Warner Bros’s Jungle Book is due in 2018.)
In contrast with British images of India that emerged from its presence here, Germany was not a significant colonial power, so its portrayal of the country drew largely from Orientalist fantasy. There were three versions of The Tiger of Eschnapur/The Indian Tomb, a double-feature film set in India, that have been very popular in Germany—directed by Joe May (1921), Richard Eichberg (1938) and Fritz Lang (1959).
Commissioned by the Maharaja of Eschnapur to build a shrine grander than the Taj Mahal, a European architect discovers that it is intended to bury the Maharaja’s unfaithful lover alive. Lang’s version is a spectacular “Gollywood” (German + Bollywood) film, an explosive cocktail of romance, action and adventure, with exotica and erotica. It has Debra Paget do a near-naked “nagina” dance in a temple before Germans in bootblack masquerading as Brahmin priests (you can see this on YouTube) to prove she is worthy of marrying the king! There is also the Indo-German co-produced trilogy directed by Franz Osten of Munich—The Light of Asia (1925), Shiraz (1928) and A Throw of Dice (1929).
(This story appears in the May-June 2016 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)