KIPLING TALE FILMED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 130, 3 June 1937, Page 3

KIPLING TALE FILMED.

EMBASSY'S "ELEPHANT BOY." There are people to whom "animal films" make no appeal. "Elephant Boy,"' an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's "Toomai of the Elephants," a masterly portrayal of adventurous life in the Indian jungle, is calculated to arouse even their enthusiasm, whilst tli>se who appreciate wild life in a picture will be delighted with it. At a preview this film, which opens at the Embassy to-night, was revealed as a masterpiece of the cinema photographer's art. Elephants and wild beasts are employed to heighten dramatic effects, but even without the animals the picture is strong in human appeal. The central character is a lovable 13-year-old Indian lad, Sabu. with sunny smile and flashing teeth. Last of a cen-turies-old line of mahouts. Sabu, nude save for loin-cloth and turban, sits astride his magnificent elephant, Kolontai, riding forth to adventure. He shares in all the thrills of rounding up a great herd of wild elephants, driving the trumpeting mass into a mighty trap. One might live a lifetime in the East without seeing such a spectacle as the horde of wild beasts crashing through the jungle to the accompaniment of a bedlam of shouts and shrieks from hundreds of native hunters. So unorthodox is "Elephant Boy" that there is no woman character in the story, but the film is so charged with human interest by reason of the boy's sorrows and joys that there is no place for lovemaking. The film bristles with unusual interest. It is a picture for everyone.