The Spiral Road

One of Rock Hudson's best dramatic performances is to be found in The Spiral Road. Coming in the midst of all those screen comedies he made with Doris Day and others it's often overlooked. But don't you overlook it.

The Spiral Road casts Rock Hudson back in the day when Indonesia was a colonial possession of the Dutch and called the Dutch East Indies. Rock is a newly minted doctor his education paid for by the Netherlands and he owes them five years of colonial service. But he intends to make it pay for him.

His intention upon arriving in Batavia which is what Jakarta was called way back when is to wangle service with Burl Ives who is a doctor who has a great reputation of treating leprosy. But he also hasn't published in 20 years and his knowledge with a little editing from Rock would land him a top research job.

Ives is a crusty old soul, but a real humanitarian, a kind of Albert Schweitzer wrapped in burlap. They take to each other even after Ives finds out what Hudson's doing and even after Hudson's sweetheart Gena Rowlands comes in from the Netherlands to be with him. They even marry though she stays in Batavia weeks at a time.

Hudson's going through a spiritual crisis and is convinced of the fact that he needs nothing in the way of any kind of faith to help him in life. His father was a bible thumping hypocrite, a modern day Pharisee as he describes him. It's turned him into quite the atheist.

He's going to need something to refuel his psyche when he's caught out in the jungle matching wits with a witch doctor on his own turf. Those last 20 minutes or so when Rock the matinée idol turns into something like Cro-Magnon man are something to see.

The Spiral Road is not a pretty picture of colonialism, in this case the Dutch variety. The scenes of the drunken revelry among the rich planters with Ives even joining in the fun are revealing. One of the best performances in the film is that of Phillip Abbott as another doctor who has totally assumed an air of white supremacy to mask a whole lot of insecurities.

The opposite of him is Geoffrey Keen who is a member of the Salvation Army and who runs the leper colony. One of the most moving scenes in the film is Keen, Ives, and Hudson at the bedside of Keen's wife who has become a leper. She's never shown because of the curtains around her bed, but it's clear she's in the final stages. Keen is concerned for her, but not much more so than he is for all the people in his charge. Another key scene is when Hudson and Ives discuss his recommendations based on Ives's case study notes. It sounds like a plea for privatization which you hear often these days from folks on the right. Get rid of the ones who are able to fend for themselves and a non-religious run colony is the best way to do it. The problem says Ives is that due to the misconceptions about leprosy these people have no place else to go.

Some viewers might also object to The Spiral Road's overtly Christian message. One of the other characters is a native Moslem doctor who also falls prey to that witch doctor and Hudson's character remarks that his prayer rug wasn't enough to keep him from any harm. Of course atheist, Christian, and Moslem are all not playing in their own ballpark.

Despite the great acting and the wonderful location color cinematography which will remind you a lot of The Mission. It should because The Spiral Road was also shot in Surinam when it was still Dutch Guiana. The Spiral Road's message is not all that clear. It wants to be Christian, but can't quite come to grips with the concept.

I think that Hamlet said it best when he remarked to Horatio that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." That's the message the film gives out.

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.

Any Rock Hudson or Burl Ives fan would have to agree this is a movie that needs to be seen in order to fully appreciate these actors' work because both performances are outstanding. The Jerry Goldsmith music is noteworthy as well. This is not a "great" movie and it always struck me as having too weak an ending, but the scenes and performances (especially Hudson and Ives together) are above average. The minor roles of the Sultan and the witch doctor Burubi are also worth seeing.

With such bad movies on DVD it's sad this film is being overlooked (I'd have to assume it's a legal problem regarding rights.) TV viewing (when it appears that is!) doesn't do it justice since I've seen it edited into sheer confusion and it really should be seen in widescreen and remastered in digital sound! There are truly memorable scenes that you'll always recall - the rats fleeing the village and Hudson being guided through the jungle (anyone who has seen the film will know exactly what I mean!) There are also comic moments as well. I just recently discovered an old battered copy of the novel and reading the party scene where chaos breaks out reminded me how much I'd like to see this movie UNCUT again!

Hopefully - sometime in the near future - this minor gem will be released!

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!

If you never thought Rock Hudson was more than a pretty face, you're not alone. A friend of mine chalked him up to "light entertainment," a description I thought was accurate until I saw The Spiral Road. He puts his heart into this movie, and it shows.

Rock stars as an ambitious doctor who specifically requests to be sent to leprosy-ridden Indonesia to study under the legendary Burl Ives. There's more to it than just admiration, and Rock's character is quite complex. His wife, Gena Rowlands, begs him to open up and when he finally does, he delivers an emotional monologue about the difficult relationship he had growing up with his father. He pulls from previously hidden talents several times throughout the film, and he's also called upon for physicality he doesn't normally perform. Within the Indonesian villages, there are strong superstitious beliefs, like what will happen if you find a dead lizard outside your door. Rock winds up being a target, and as he's chased into an endless swamp, he nearly loses his sanity. It's very impressive, and if 1962 weren't such a contentious year full of male talent, he might have received a Rag nomination for his performance.

My only criticism of the film is quite small, so if it doesn't bother you, take it with a grain of salt. Filmed in the 1960s but set in the 1930s, the fashions and hairstyles don't reflect the proper time period. Gena wears a flare cut coat and a skirt suit with a hemline above the knees, for example. If you don't care, you'll be far more interested in seeing Rock in his clean, well-fitting white tank top that he shows off several times.