56 mins., colour, inter titles in English for dialogue, extra-diegetic music
Production : Bennett Pictures Corp. (the company of De la Falaise’s wife, the actress Constance Bennett)
Source : distributed in DVD by Milestone and Les Films du paradox. There are also many extracts, usually unacknowledged, on YouTube.
An ethnodrama set in Bali and built around a central story about the competition between the beautiful young ‘maid’ Poutou and her not-quite-so-beautiful half-sister, Saplak, for the love of Nyong, a handsome young man who has arrived from the north of the island.
After making her feelings known to Nyongo, albeit non-verbally, Poutou and her father await his marriage proposal. However, Nyong chances upon Saplak bathing in a pool, is entranced by her beauty and proposes to run away with her instead. Finding the loss of face unbearable, Poutou throws herself from a high bridge and the final part of the film follows her cremation.
The story itself is very lame, the characterisation shallow, the music often execrable and there is much that is simply too good to be true about the setting. However, the cast were all local Balinese, including the principal characters, and there are many exquisitely filmed sequences, shot in Technicolor, of everyday life in the market and in the streets, but also of the ceremonial events.
These include the same tjalonarang ceremony that is shown in Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali, in which Rangda the Witch is pitted against Barong the Dragon. The location looks so similar that one wonders whether it might even be the same place, with some of the same participants.
The film culminates in two sequences that feature some remarkable dancing. The first is of the djanger, in which, apart from the female principal, all the participants are seated, while the second is of the legong, performed by the two principal female characters, Poutou and Saplak. The cremation sequence over the last five minutes, which is also spectacular, appears to have been for the most part a genuine event rather than one performed only for the film.
The film was shot in 1933 and released in 1935 in various different versions. In the US version, the close ups of naked breasted women were removed by the censor, while in the British version scenes with even the slightest suggestion of violence were cut. The Milestone/ Les Films du paradox DVD is based on a restored version of the film that reincorporates the parts cut by the censors.
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