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This is a wonderful 1954 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor as Ruth, who decides to marry a rich tea plantation owner, John Wiley played by Peter Finch. Why this movie is so mint to start with is it really highlights Elizabeth Taylor in her heyday in an exotic locale Ironically, Vivien Leigh was the original cast for the lead in this movie and is still seen in distance shots in some parts of the final take of the movie. When Ruth makes the decision to marry John and go back with him to Ceylon, she says she believes she can love him and that is really just a forecast. Complications seem to set In immediately however when she arrives at this idyllic location. Driving down the road, with wonderful trees on the side, a surely elephant pops out and her husband fires warning shots, which she seems to find a slight bit jarring. There might be another side to him that she is not going to be sure of in terms of how it is and how it might manifest. She is met with skepticism by the overseer of the house who thinks she just wants to dictate and be waited on but at the same time she is making some appraisals about things that might actually be accurate and upsetting to the status quo there. John vacillates between doting and a bit rough with her, and in the meantime his main European helping, Dick, played by Dana Andrews is fairly open for his fondness for her and for sure that have a nice easy rapport that at the least is translating into great friends, or maybe more than that? Within her initial arrival, there are a bunch of men at the mansion drinking but no other women around. We later learn during a dance presentation at a celebration, that there are a lot of local women including one dancer that the film really keys on who John himself describes as exotic. If these women are so exotic, why are they so out of bounds, due to being a different nationality? Wouldn't exotic be enough for some, but back then in that time and place at least marriage wise there might have been just an invisible wall against this. Ruth is realizing John and others are way too tied to tradition heavily established by John’s father to almost worship and she may in fact want out. But she is showing that she is quite able in this new environment, riding horses, driving the jeeps and being generally assertive. The other issue is the disgruntled elephants, who had their traditional walk way essentially blocked by the plantation and the main residence and when they still wanted to make their way through, a large group of men would form a blockade. She has a standing invite from Dick to runaway to Paris with her and leave. In just a great scene in the movie that was a microcosm of Ruth’s character, Ruth and Dick are on horseback in the mid-morning overseeing work at the plantation, and it is clear that they resonate with each other and Dick leans over and kisses her, and instead of objecting, she is pragmatic and tells him she wants to love John and things she can. But she is not denying the pull between them Things go further into disarray when there is a forming drought of rain, with thunder appearing but no rain following. This ties in with her character and how she is trying to read the tea leaves and forecast what to do with some accuracy and signs might not actually be proper signals, as this thunder doesn't follow with any actual rain. The acting work of the elephants in this movie is just unbelievable and they should have gotten an Oscar if there was a category for them. Things finally come to a head when the drought continues and there is a disease outbreak locally and who is really who, what is really what and how is everybody going to emerge from this as there is always Paris ?
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Elizabeth Taylor, Adventure, movies, classics,
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