Remembering Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book and Beyond

Revisiting film adaptations of author, poet Rudyard Kipling’s famous works, on his death anniversary.

The Jungle Book gave Rudyard Kipling worldwide fame, but it also made him a prisoner. For a writer of his versatility and talent, he is known to the world mostly as the man who created Mowgli and his friends, thanks to the incessant film and TV adaptations. As we know, two more are coming.

But during his prime, his short stories, novels and poems gave birth to many films. On his death anniversary, we look at a few adaptations that serve as grand entertainment, as well as lessons, as the author intended.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

John Huston read Kipling’s story when he was just 14 and the sense of intrigue in the plot and characters gave him an adrenaline rush so high that as soon as he turned filmmaker, he wanted to direct it. But it took him twenty long years to finally make it. The film follows Kipling’s tale of two British soldiers who resign from the army, in a bid to take over a remote middle-eastern kingdom, named Kafiristan – a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander, one of the reasons why the working title of the film was The Man Who Would Be Alexander. Sean Connery and Michael Caine form the pair of opportunistic Victorian duo with Saeed Jaffrey and Christopher Plummer rounding out a star-studded cast. This is a glorious escapade that strides fast with its sense of humour, standing apart from the serious tone of most epic films of its time. It’s exhilarating and a late masterwork from the actor-director.

Gunga Din (1939)

Gunga Din about an English soldier in British India talking about his water-bearer and how he is a better man of the two, is a poem that makes for terrific recitation. But this martial poem from Barrack-Room Ballads hardly has enough material to become a feature film. However, RKO producer Pandro S. Berman saw the possibility and turned it into an A-lister film with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Joan Fontaine, and Sam Jaffe in the title role. But let’s just be honest here, for all the entertainment George Stevens’ film offers, it portrays the white man’s idea of the third world, primeval and uncultured. The adventure yarn of the film inspired countless flicks, including Steven Spielberg’s racist fiction, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).

Captains Courageous (1937)

Kipling’s tale of unlikely friendship from his 1897 novella of the same name has Harvey Cheyne Jr, a rich spoiled brat and a fisherman from humble background. When Harvey finds himself in troubled waters of the north Atlantic, quite literally, is saved by a Portuguese fisherman, the two from opposite ends of society take time to get along, and the boy learns the ways of the world through an exciting voyage. Freddie Bartholomew as Harvey and Spencer Tracy as Manuel Fidello, the fisherman keep the proceeding warm, and this is an understated victory of coming-of-age drama for Victor Fleming.

The Cat Who Walked by Herself (1988)

Adapting a short story from the collection named Just So Stories, this Soviet animated feature is a work of unobtrusive inventiveness by director Ideya Garanina. Using a variety of animation techniques, including puppetry, stop motion and traditional animation, this film unifies them all in a unique concoction of an origin story of how the cat and the humans have come to their present state. Narrated by a seemingly all-knowing cat, you will discover how the cat insisted on greater independence unlike other wild animals who surrendered their freedom to humans by being completely domesticated.

(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. Follow him on Twitter: @RanjibMazumder)

(This article was first published on 18 January 2016 and has been republished from The Quint’s archives on the occasion of Rudyard Kipling’s death anniversary.)