Legong: Dance of the Virgins

I think people should know what to expect. Lets face it the synopsis gives the entire story away. So why watch this thing...

Well... its an interesting silent film with some very bad music scored to it (it reminds you of the music from part of Disney's Snow White, just not the good parts).

It is in color but quite frankly has the look of a bad home movie.

For lack of a better way of saying it... This movie is what you would have expected from National Geographic if they had shot movies in the thirties and wanted to make fun of native tribes.

It was interesting only to see the way in which people viewed non-European's... it otherwise has no artistic merit. Very bad... I would have given it a one, but I only give ones to movies so bad that you can enjoy them for being bad. This one is just a waste of film/videotape/DVD.

If you are a kid, you might find this ethnographic film interesting--mostly because there are so many bare-breasted young ladies in the film. However, this is NOT hot stuff--more like stuff I saw in "National Geographic" decades ago. But, back in 1932, this was about as hot as you'd normally find and I am sure many went to the film in the name of 'education'--only to really see some pubescent Balinesian babes. Hot stuff for 1932, but amazingly tame today.

About the only thing (other than breasts) that someone might be interested in this film relates mostly to die-hard cinephiles. These folks and film historians might be interested because this is the last of the Two-color Technicolor films made in the US. This process was abandoned because it did NOT produce true color, but various shades of blue-green and orange-red. In its best (such as in the original "Phantom of the Opera") it's striking, but all too often it just looks pretty washed out and weird--hence the move to a Three-color Technicolor in the mid-late 1930s. In addition, the film is of some mild interest because it's also the last silent produced by a major studio in America--Paramount. However, this film was made mostly for international release and it was pared down to remove the cleavage for audiences at home.

For the most part, you see a lot of bare-breasted women doing a variety of mundane tasks--too mundane actually. It's all strung together with a story, of sorts, about young romance and sisters who become rivals. But none of it is interesting enough to make you stay watching until the end. Mostly, it's tedious and only passable, at best, entertainment--very, very slow entertainment at that!

Shot in Bali in 1933 with an all Balinese cast, Legong adopts the Flaherty technique of grafting a fictional storyline onto what is essentially a documentary film, much in the style of Nanook of the North and Moana. Photographed in two-strip Technicolor, the film is far more valuable as an ethnographic document of life in Bali in the early 30's than as Hollywood entertainment.

It's a shame the film crew was not able to handle on-site sound. Even more than the absence of actual Balinese dialogue, which is replaced by dialogue cards, the loss of music during the several important dance scenes is deflating. While the composer tries hard, there is no way he can substitute for the sounds of an actual Balinese gamelan orchestra, with its lively rhythms and brilliantine percussion.

The story is a bit of fluff about unrequited love; one that would have little relevance in actual Balinese culture. Far more interesting are the dance performances, the market scenes, and the elaborate ceremonies, preserved here in color for all time. A true step back in time, especially when one realizes that the old people seen in the film were born in the 19th century. Legong suffered censorship in Britain (for violence: cockfighting) and in the U.S. for nudity (bare breasts). Today it would be more likely to be censored for showing a couple of six-year olds (at a guess) sharing a couple of clove cigarettes.

From the angle used, I believe the deserted beach shown at the end of the film to be Kuta Beach, which today resembles Miami far more than the idyllic strip of sand and water that forms the final shot in Legong.

This film was the last Hollywood film produced and released in two-strip Technicolor and the last silent film produced in Hollywood.

The film was beautifully filmed in Bali, and has a musical soundtrack with titles (no dialogue). Legong was produced by Bennett Productions, and originally released by Paramount International (outside the US only) due to concerns about brief female nudity in the film. However, later in the 30's the film apparently showed up in various mutilated versions in so-called "grind houses" in New York City under various lurid titles. The UCLA Film and Television Archive restored Legong in 1999, using prints from the US, Canada, and the UK. The Archive plans to restore one other two-strip Techicolor film, Kliou the Killer Whale, also directed by Henri de la Falaise and released by Bennett Productions.

The main value of this enchanting film is the glimpse it gives us of Balinese village life and culture of 100 years ago. The film is well photographed and the Technicolor process in use then was more than adequate to the task of bringing out all the rich details.

Several reviewers have lamented about this "lost" culture, even suggesting that Hollywood and film audiences have played a part in its destruction. WRONG! The Balinese culture remains relatively intact today! This is due to the genius of the people in using modern technological when necessary and convenient without destroying the essence and magic of their vibrant cultural heritage.

So the great appeal of this film will be to those who visit Bali today and wish to compare their experience with these pictures of the past. There are some differences, of course. Most Balinese males now wear western attire and jeans "during the day" and may revert to more traditional sarong garb in the privacy of their homes "after work."

All the young ladies cover their breasts today, but this trend was already underway in the thirties when the film was shot. (However, one can still find in the villages very old ladies who disdain covering their upper bodies.) In the film all of the females are shown bare-breasted some but not all of the time. And they are beauties! (And one suspects the raison d'etre for the creation of the film may have been to exploit such pulchritude!)

So the pictures of village life in the film are accurate, and can be experienced today if one leaves the tourist areas and seeks out the rural hinterlands. The dances shown in the film are still performed on a regular basis (for a tourist audience, to be sure) but unchanged in content. Cock-fighting remains a very popular pastime. The religious rites and processions and cremation ceremonies have not changed at all. They are all well depicted in the film.

However, the writer of the screen play was obviously not a Balinese and his plot contrivances concerning romance and courtship are more European than Balinese. It is, for instance, almost unthinkable that a Balinese girl would kill herself over a failed "love affair" consisting mainly of a few amorous glances and a brief conversation or two! She would simply move on and pick another lover.

The writer also gets the religious thinking behind cremation all wrong. A Balinese MUST be properly cremated if the soul is to attain Nirvana, their equivalent of "heaven." An opposite view is posited in the film.

If you have no interest in Bali, forget this film. Otherwise, I think you will enjoy the experience.