Am schwarzen Fluß

This is a big picture, which deserves more exposure. In the early 60s Universal was more known for fluffball (but high quality) Doris Day product, but here they show their diversity by presenting what was obviously a prestige picture. Bob Mulligan, who scored a hit with 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in the same year, got to try his hand at an epic. The main titles are perfect to set the mood: youthful Jerry Goldsmith's talents as a composer are spectacular and atmospheric. He of course used gamelans in his score, but he uses them with concise effect, and without cliché. The graphics of the titles are very fine: colourful maps guide us in to a strange 'exotic' place. Such a relief from the sterile titles of today.

This film really made a big impression on me as a kid when I saw it on TV in the late 60s. 'Pan and scan' TV viewing had a definite mystique to it, as the process of squeezing anamorphic images into The Box automatically made the picture in question important. 'The Spiral Road' was no exception. But it IS important. I can imagine the grandeur of seeing it in a full-blown picture palace. Everything in the film is competently executed. I even remember the props, such as Rock's intriguing spherical fan on his bedside table.

The performances are excellent, reliable, and everyone really delivers. Burl Ives practically steals the show (as usual), and gets some good 'honeylamb' lines in. The aged Sultan is memorable. The fabulous Larry Gates, one of the greats, never disappoints. This role was a warm up for his deeper part as the missionary in 'The Sand Pebbles', a more profound companion to this picture.

'Lord Jim' of 1965 explores the same 'dark side of the jungle', only a century earlier. All three are outstanding examinations of the many dimensions of tropical and Asian colonialism, albeit from a Western viewpoint.

I agree that it's time this picture, and many more like it, was allowed into wider exposure via video/DVD. Vendors, take note!

PS: I just saw the DVD edition, and I was not disappointed. The picture holds up very well, though I would have wished for more Burl Ives in the last sequences. Russell Harlan's camera-work is outstanding, only matched by his work on 'Hawaii' a few years later.

"The Spiral Road" has stuck in my memory ever since I saw it on TV decades ago, and I have always wanted to see it uncut and widescreen. The supporting roles are uniformly good: especially Gena Rowlands, in confident and alluring form as the sophisticated Els (and still turning in moving performances as of 2005's "The Notebook"). But this is largely a two-man vehicle for Burl Ives and Rock Hudson--and especially in the concluding scenes, nearly a one-man tour-de-force for Hudson. This is not the shallow handsome-guy Rock often had to play. He makes the most of the chance to display depth and intensity as the arrogant, atheistic city doctor who comes to the jungle with scorn for the locals, and especially for missionaries. Burl Ives shows neither the sentimental cuteness of "Frosty the Snowman" nor the over-the-top bombast of Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"--his Dr. Jansen is kind and realistic, a savvy jungle survivor and a practical mentor. Notably, for a film with a clear eye toward colonialist excesses, missionaries are not stereotyped here, but we see examples of both self-righteous culture-tramplers and people of self-sacrificing faith. Ives delivers my favorite line: "Out here in the jungle, the Lord has a way of sorta putting his thumb on people that don't believe in him."

I saw The Spiral Road as a teen-aged boy in 1963. It was the most impactful movie of that period in my life, creating an emotional impression in me that lingers to this day. Indeed, I cannot hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony without vividly recalling the scratchy recording playing in that remote colonial outpost as the two linked protagonists each struggled with their personal demons.

The plot of The Spiral Road takes the viewer on a journey not unlike that described in Heart of Darkness; thematic elements contained in the plot become metaphors for larger lessons to be learned regarding colonialism, missionary fervor, the hegemony of Western medicine, and the absolutism of good versus evil as understood by Calvinist colonists.

The superb cast easily sustains the epic scope and grandeur of the film while the intelligent and artful script relates a story that is at once compelling and horrifying.

Hollywood moguls; please get a clue. The Spiral Road belongs in the DVD libraries of discerning film viewers the world over!

In 1936, a good-looking and atheist Dutch physician (Rock Hudson) joins forces in Indonesia with a stubborn Doctor (Burl Ives) at a remote location , both of whom heal ill people and help injured natives at the Netherlands colony . Along the way , they have a risked run-in with a local witch-doctor (Reggie Nalder) who uses black magic to destroy his enemies . Shattering Adventure That Boldly Explores the Jungles of the Heart!

Enjoyable as well colorful film about two dedicated doctors who attempt to cure sick people and treat leprosy patients in the lush jungles . This is the exciting story set in the Dutch West Indies circa 1936 about an arrogant doctor : Rock Hudson who followed a dream , being really challenged by love : Gena Rowlands , sickness , leprosy and black magic . Here director Robert Mulligan struck a correct balance of pace and sensitivity in the absorbing tale of a young man who arrives in Indonesia and through the jungles of Java helps care for natives . As he is struggling to reconcile his free spirit as well as ambition and philanthropic wishes with the jungle rigors . Finely starred by a luminous Rock Hudson who chalked up another hit in this long but always attractive flick based on John Lee Mahin and Neil Paterson script from the book and play "Godsgeuzen" by Jan de Hartog , being rightly adapted . This agreeable yarn packs a moving screenplay , intense drama , fine interpretations and intelligent filmmaking . Good acting by Rock Hudson as a good-natured but greedy doctor who undergoes a series of ordeals on a redemption journey to cure people and special mention for Burl Ives as an eccentric older man who gains the trust of the local natives while healing them . And the charming Gena Rowlands as the beloved wife . They are adequately accompanied by an appropriate support cast , such as : Larry Gates , Geoffrey Keen , Neva Patterson , Will Kuluva , Philip Abbott , Karl Swenson , Robert F. Simon and Reggie Nalder.

This film follows the wake of the highly acclaimed ¨Nun's story¨ by Fred Zinneman starred by Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch that consolidated a sub-genre about Doctors and religious people in far countries , going on ¨Heaven knows , Mr Allison¨ by John Huston with Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr and ¨A Nun at the Crossroads¨ with Rosanna Schiaffino and John Richardson , ¨The Sins of Rachel Cade¨ by Gordon Douglas with Angie Dickinson , Peter Finch , and ¨White Whitch Doctor¨ by Henry Hathaway with Susan Hayward , Robert Mitchum , among others .

It packs brilliant and glimmering cinematography, showing spectacular outdoors by cameraman Russell Harlan . Shot on location in Paramaribo, Suriname and Universal Studios , Universal City, California . Along with a thrilling and moving musical score by maestro Jerry Goldsmith in his usual style . This motion picture with interesting plot was well directed by Robert Mulligan , a filmmaker more specialist in human drama and with sure touch in the interior scenes . Mulligan has been out-stripped in reputation by his one time partner/producer Alan J Pacula . Mulligan directed good dramas as ¨A great impostor¨, ¨Love with the proper stranger¨, ¨Inside Daisy Clover¨ and ¨Summer of 42¨ that was extremely successful . And a nice Western titled ¨Stalking Moon¨with Gregory Peck. His last works as ¨Blood Brothers¨ , ¨Same time next year¨ , ¨Kiss me goodbye¨ , ¨Clara's heart¨ failed to bring the required response from the cinema-goers public . Rating : 7/10 . Above average , worthwhile watching . The flick will appeal to Rock Hudson fans.

After I finished watching "The Spiral Road" -regretting that the failed end product had been directed by Robert Mulligan, the same man who did "To Kill a Mockingbird"- I was surprised to know that both films were released the same year. After both, Mulligan (a long time associate of Alan J. Pakula) started a chain of fine motion pictures, with favorites as "Love with the Proper Stranger", "Up the Down Staircase", "Summer of '42", "The Other" and "The Man in the Moon". But something went wrong in "The Spiral Road", and I believe it has to do mostly with the screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Neil Paterson. Everything seems okay in the first 90 minutes or so: I thought the story was in the lines of the Mexican film "Amok" ( based on a novel by Stefan Zweig) and the Argentinean real-life account "Houses of Fire", in which doctors fight in faraway places against strange diseases; and it also reminded me of "Gorillas in the Mist" or "Never Cry Wolf", which were based on fact. Here Rock Hudson plays Dutch doctor Anton Drager who convinces the head of the colonial health service in Batavia to assign him to a leper colony ruled by bright scientist Brits Jansen (Burl Ives), a man who might have made great advances in the study of leprosy, but who has neither ordered, compiled nor published his findings. Hudson brings conviction to the role of a man whose upbringing by a religious father has turned him into a nihilistic cynic, a rude and opportunistic scientist. Then the character of Els (Gena Rowlands) is introduced, things start to shake. It's a pity because it has nothing to do with the 1930s character or with Rowlands, who is good as usual. It is just the turning point when things begin to go bad. An endless sequence portraying the "decadence" of Dutch colonialists in a party (it's been reported that "Mulligan filmed it in Suriname with old colonial Dutch types, who were very mad when the film was released, because he had fooled them into re-enacting a colonial party") is followed by the introduction of a dwarf as comic relief. Soon Drager and Jansen disagree, argue and separate, the former starts to drink, and the third act turns into an embarrassingly silly and kilometric search for spirituality. Somebody must have told Mulligan or the adapters of Jan de Hartog's novel, that filming the spirit or the spiritual life is no easy task, and that capturing its search on film stock, a privilege reserved to a few: Dreyer, Rossellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky, among the prominent... But works as Fleming's "Joan of Arc", King's "The Song of Bernadette", Rook's "Siddharta", Zeffirelli's "Brother Sun, Sister Moon", Jewison's "Agnes of God", or Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" are failed intents. While Drager goes in circles in the jungle, Jansen disappears from the film, and his place is taken by a evil witch doctor, played by Reggie Nalder, whom I wrongly thought that I had seen doing all, from Hitchcockian assassin to green vampire. Then the film ends abruptly after Drager experiences a "moment of illumination" (as reported, mocked by Monty Python) in the spiral road to spirituality. A real shame, because for Universal-International (which I remember that in those days was perceived as the corny studio) it meant a serious super-production, and it shows. Take also note of Jerry Goldsmith's score: if Bernard Herrmann borrowed in 1946 a few notes from traditional music of the Pacific for his "Anna and the King of Siam" score, then Goldsmith chose the same. If not, Goldsmith seems to have lifted Herrmann's main theme.