I have always felt that among the child actors who managed to maintain their careers into adulthood, Dean Stockwell has been one of the best. He certainly is able to handle any role - he was the more sympathetic one of the two child killers in COMPULSION, and he played the amorous crime boss in MARRIED TO THE MOB. He even was Howard Hughes in TUCKER. His early films showed great promise too. Besides the one I am about to review, notice THE GREEN YEARS and THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR and THE SECRET GARDEN.
KIM gave Stockwell more than just a chance to play the central figure in a film. He was playing in a colorful background (India in the days of the British Raj in the 19th Century). He was sharing the central stage with one of the great film stars of the 1930s and 1940s (Errol Flynn). And he had a chance to play in a movie based on a classic story - Kipling's best remembered novel.
Kimball O'Hara is half Anglo-Irish and half Indian. His father has been dead many years, so he lives with his mother's people on the streets of Calcutta. It is about 1885, and while the British are running India, memories of the atrocities of the Indians against the British (remember Cawnpore - see the review of Flynn's THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE), and memories of British retaliation against the Indians (such as tying Indian rebels to cannon mouths and blowing them apart) have poisoned the relationship quite deeply. Moreover, the Russians are active in the subcontinent supporting rebellion and dissent.
He finds a pair of substitute father figures. One is the Hindu holy man, the Lama (Paul Lukas) who is seeking a final pilgrimage in his life to a holy site. When Kimball is identified as the son of a former army officer, Colonel Creighton (Robert Douglas) takes him off the streets, and puts him into a school. His learning is difficult (there is an amusing sequence where we see Kim cheating all the time, not realizing his pragmatic approach to learning is not what is expected of him). Eventually Creighton puts him in the hand of the spy-master Mahbub Ali (Flynn), who becomes the second substitute father while training him in intelligence gathering. The novel goes into great detail about this - called by Kipling (and ever since) "the great game". Kim is trained to react to stimuli as though he has a photographic memory: he can look at a bunch of seeds or jewels once and rattle off how many of each there are.
But although he is patriotic, and follows the orders given from Creighton to Mahbub Ali, Kim remains deeply faithful to the Lama. Mahbub Ali sees this as an unexpected advantage: Kim can go undercover accompanying the Lama on that pilgrimage which goes towards the Russian Indian border (near present day Packistan and Afghanistan). So the novel (and the film follow Kim and the Lama on the pilgrimage - and show all the color and diversity of that remarkable subcontinent. It does not fail to continue the espionage, with Kim learning what is going on with the Russian agents (and relaying the information to Mahbub Ali, who is following from a distance as a back-up). But the crisis in the story is which of the two distinct missions of the two distinct father figures will get the upper hand in Kim's mind. And how will he balance them out?
I won't go into the final details - the audience will not be disappointed by the resolution. The end result is that we do see a young, happy, care-free little boy turn into a thoughtful teenager preparing for manhood. Stockwell's performance was a very good one, abetted by Lukas as a simple and good man, and Flynn as a craftier one, but one who does keep a close eye on his apprentice "son". And the canvas of India won't disappoint at all. Definitely a film to watch.
KIM gave Stockwell more than just a chance to play the central figure in a film. He was playing in a colorful background (India in the days of the British Raj in the 19th Century). He was sharing the central stage with one of the great film stars of the 1930s and 1940s (Errol Flynn). And he had a chance to play in a movie based on a classic story - Kipling's best remembered novel.
Kimball O'Hara is half Anglo-Irish and half Indian. His father has been dead many years, so he lives with his mother's people on the streets of Calcutta. It is about 1885, and while the British are running India, memories of the atrocities of the Indians against the British (remember Cawnpore - see the review of Flynn's THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE), and memories of British retaliation against the Indians (such as tying Indian rebels to cannon mouths and blowing them apart) have poisoned the relationship quite deeply. Moreover, the Russians are active in the subcontinent supporting rebellion and dissent.
He finds a pair of substitute father figures. One is the Hindu holy man, the Lama (Paul Lukas) who is seeking a final pilgrimage in his life to a holy site. When Kimball is identified as the son of a former army officer, Colonel Creighton (Robert Douglas) takes him off the streets, and puts him into a school. His learning is difficult (there is an amusing sequence where we see Kim cheating all the time, not realizing his pragmatic approach to learning is not what is expected of him). Eventually Creighton puts him in the hand of the spy-master Mahbub Ali (Flynn), who becomes the second substitute father while training him in intelligence gathering. The novel goes into great detail about this - called by Kipling (and ever since) "the great game". Kim is trained to react to stimuli as though he has a photographic memory: he can look at a bunch of seeds or jewels once and rattle off how many of each there are.
But although he is patriotic, and follows the orders given from Creighton to Mahbub Ali, Kim remains deeply faithful to the Lama. Mahbub Ali sees this as an unexpected advantage: Kim can go undercover accompanying the Lama on that pilgrimage which goes towards the Russian Indian border (near present day Packistan and Afghanistan). So the novel (and the film follow Kim and the Lama on the pilgrimage - and show all the color and diversity of that remarkable subcontinent. It does not fail to continue the espionage, with Kim learning what is going on with the Russian agents (and relaying the information to Mahbub Ali, who is following from a distance as a back-up). But the crisis in the story is which of the two distinct missions of the two distinct father figures will get the upper hand in Kim's mind. And how will he balance them out?
I won't go into the final details - the audience will not be disappointed by the resolution. The end result is that we do see a young, happy, care-free little boy turn into a thoughtful teenager preparing for manhood. Stockwell's performance was a very good one, abetted by Lukas as a simple and good man, and Flynn as a craftier one, but one who does keep a close eye on his apprentice "son". And the canvas of India won't disappoint at all. Definitely a film to watch.