When I watch this film (which I do, reasonably regularly - it is a terrific Sunday afternoon kind of film) I often wish for the film that never was; the film starring Vivien Leigh as the older difficult woman, the film with Finch and Leigh (lovers at the time) pitted against each other in this extraordinary primeval jungle vibe film, a film with a sequence involving a giant anaconda and Vivien Leigh fighting for her life - but such things are not to be. Fortunately they had the sense to avoid rubber anacondas and the whole movie was probably so far over budget by the time they got young Liz on board that they dropped the whole idea like an over-barbequed potato.
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| Practice? |
I don't blame Liz Taylor, she was very young and just trying to make
the most of what she had been given - both in terms of her own ability
at that point in time and also the script. She really got the fuzzy end
of the lollipop with this one. There are many long shots of Leigh still
in the film, in the most exotic looking places - and then whenever Liz
takes over the scene, it's on green screen (mostly) and she's having
to get the sense of Ceylon and the extraordinary world Ruth Wiley has been
taken to by looking at the sequences when someone else played her role.
I do watch the relationship between Peter Finch and Elizabeth Taylor with a sense of bemusement and wonder. It makes very little sense. John Wiley married Ruth deliberately, brought her to Ceylon and then completely ignored her and her diaphonous nightgowns for some indoor bicycle polo (
not that there's anything wrong with that).
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| The only game to play. |
Now, any other story you would be thinking - well, he's gay, and he just needs a son. Only there is no follow through of any kind on that story. They're again, they're off again, she's going off with Dana Andrews, he doesn't care, they embrace passionately at the end of the film. Hollywood, whilst not actually ever able to tell stories about same sex oriented individuals, knew enough about how to do them obliquely and you really don't get the sense that Wiley is gay. Sure, he hates his dad, who is a vicious over-bearing dead dude, but the idea here seems to be that he is so filled with self loathing that he can't sustain a decent relationship with his wife.
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| Tom Wiley - The Guv'nor - still rules from beyond the grave |
Now, had Ruth been played by Vivien Leigh, she would have been an older woman (so having a son probably would not have come into it), he would have unquestionably have married for love, and yet she would have led him as much a merry dance as he did her. I feel sure that it would have made a fascinating film, one we simply will never get to see. Unless someone invents a time machine. And goes back in time. With a psychiatrist. And undertakes to treat Leigh in Ceylon before everything gets too much for her. Do you hear that gauntlet throwing, all you geeks who are secretly working on time travel? There's a challenge for you.
