The Man Who Would Be King

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) begins with two British soldiers in India heading north. Daniel and Peachy intend to reach Kafiristan and rule it. Nobody has gone in there since Alexander. In a battle an arrow strikes Daniel in the chest, hits his bandolier and draws no blood; the locals take him for Alexander's son, and therefore a god. After a while Daniel starts believing it himself. The source is Rudyard Kipling's story of 1888. Kipling appears in the film as a character. John Huston had carried the project since reading the story as a child. He had planned to make it since the fifties, originally with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. Bogart died in 1957 and Gable in 1960, and it stalled. Huston went to Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, then considered Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the seventies. The suggestion finally came from Newman, who said the parts should go to British actors and named Connery and Caine. Michael Caine was delighted to learn his role had originally been written for Humphrey Bogart, his favourite actor when he was young. Filming ran from 9 January to 3 April 1975, mostly in Morocco. The capital of Kafiristan was Aït Benhaddou, the battles were shot at the Kasbah of Tifoultoute, and the Khyber Pass was the Todgha Gorge. Mountain sequences were filmed at Chamonix in France and interiors at Pinewood in England. It cost 8.5 million dollars, made 11 million, and received four nominations at the 48th Academy Awards. It runs 129 minutes. Good for: classical adventure, chemistry between two actors, and stories about colonialism. Less good for: the film criticises colonialism while showing the people of Kafiristan as an almost entirely passive mass. The pace is slow and the first half hour is setup. There is barely a woman in it.