Il serpente bianco

In the town in German East Africa, right by the border with British territory, everyone gets along famously. They are all united, Germans and British, Blacks and Whites, in despising Jean Hersholt, who's the richest man around and an utter rotter. He heads back home, finds himself Eleanor Boardman, the daughter of a destitute German aristocrat, pays off daddy's debts, marries her, and brings her back to Africa. Everyone attends his wedding party for her sake, but he's so disagreeable that everyone leaves, and she promptly falls in love with German soldier Ralph Forbes. Then World War One begins, the natives revolt, the volcano erupts, the ....

Well, not the last, but there's a general upheaval and a big ending fight scene as the natives attack the German fort that looks like it was pulled from a western.

It's not a particularly good movie, even though you can see why it was immensely popular when it was made. Sound and Technicolor! Villainy and love! Big battle scenes! True, the second unit work seems to be rather slapdash, the dialogue is spoken at a slow pace with lots of time between sides, and so forth. But for 1930, it's all rather impressive.

It being 1930, there are some technical issues. Because it was two-strip Technicolor, people bleed orange, and use the color far more frequently than we do nowadays. Also, the images are softer than one would wish, but it's one of those movies that would have rated very highly in the year it was made.... and seems ridiculous nowadays.

I'll start by saying that I'm very glad to have seen MAMBA, thanks to Kino's new release of a long-in-the-works restoration of what was long thought to be a lost film. A print was discovered in Australia and the Vitaphone discs survived (at UCLA I assume). Apparently only fragments of a silent version had been known to survive. Anyway, the money was found to restore the Australian print and put it all back together ... minus some bits the Australian censors had cut out.

Mamba was touted in 1930 as the first All-Technicolor All-Talkie dramatic film. Produced by Tiffany, it was apparently a success in its day.

Unfortunately, the story of the film's production and rediscovery is almost more interesting than the film itself. The story is set in 1913 in German East Africa just before the war. Boorish landowner August Bolte (Jean Hersholt) is the local rich man (the notes say he's an ivory trader, but I don't recall any mention of ivory), supposedly called Mamba (a deadly snake) by the locals (although I don't recall this word being uttered). There are German and British soldiers in the area. Bolte forces an impoverished German nobleman to "sell" his daughter (Eleanor Boardman) for a sum of money. Bolte snags his bride and heads back to Africa but on the voyage she meets a dashing German officer (Ralph Forbes).

It seems that Bolte rapes his bride on their wedding night (cut by censors) and she lives behind a locked door once they get back to Africa. Bolte tries to win over the local society by throwing a party for his wife but it doesn't work and they soon get word that war has been declared in Europe. Bolte is drafted into the local German army but there is a big native uprising that binds together the Germans and Brits (at least temporarily) against them.

Sorry to say the acting is abysmal. Stiff and hammy and much of the time they seem to be parodying silent acting technique. Boardman spends most of her time wringing her hands and when she speaks (which isn't often) she sounds more like she's from Old Virginy than Old Germany. Hersholt comes off best as the slimy pig. Forbes is a piece of wood with a scar across his cheek. Will Stanton plays the Cockney servant for comic relief.

The color is quite good (2-strip Technicolor or whatever we call it these days) although it's limited to red and greens. Much credit is due to the UCLA restoration team and the various partners. The film looks great, and the sound is very good.

The story reminded me a lot of THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE (1919) with Hersholt on par with Warner Oland's deranged husband in that Elsie Ferguson film.

Mostly forgotten today, Mamba was a sort of landmark in its day. It was one of the most bold films that the smaller studios, the so-called Poverty rows, ever made. It was a joint project of Tiffany and Color Art Productions. It had ornate costumes, realistic and spectacle sets, and claimed that it was the "First All Technicolor Drama."

Mamba didn't just have a scene or two colored, as did Dixiana, Rio Rita, Broadway Melody or the Great Gabbo. Money poor Mamba was more ambitious than those films. Mamba was filmed in 2-strip Technicolor from beginning to end. It may well have been the first sound feature to have had such a grand treatment. When the film opened at the Gaiety Theatre in New York, it caused a sensation, breaking the two-week box office at the theater.

Apparently, the color was outstanding with lush greens and excellent flesh tones. Overwhelmed by its Technicolor effects, the critics of the day gave the movie and its stars excellent reviews, pointing out how the film appealed to both men and women alike because of its Jungle theme and the beauty and the beast aspect of the romance.

According to the director, Albert Rogell, while in production Mamba kept running out of money. In order to fool, the creditors, the production kept two sets of identical costumes available so that the cast and crew could keep working on the production.

While this cash poor production may have been a grand success in 1930, Father Time has finally collected the bill on this historic landmark film. It exists today only in fragments. Too bad an identical master copy wasn't keep in the vaults.

This movie was the first all-talking all-colour movie ever made. Murray Matthews, a projectionist who is dedicated to the preservation of movies, projection equipment and cinema memorabilia, and his wife Pat own a complete print of 'Mamba' in remarkably good condition. In 2001, Pat discovered that the film was listed as lost except for fragments and notified the Vitaphone Project that they had a complete copy of the film and an incomplete set of sound disks, but almost no interest was shown by anyone in the USA.

In 2008, Sydney film historian Paul Brennan came to Adelaide especially to view the film. Realising its importance, he put in train restoration efforts which included enlisting the aid of another film historian, Swedish Jonas Nordin. He owned a complete set of the sound disks and undertook the complicated task of synchronizing them with the film, and making a digital version which was shown at a gala premiere on 21st November, 2011, in the Astor Theatre, Melbourne, when Murray, Pat and Paul were introduced to the acclamation of a delighted audience

The American Film Institute and the Australian National Film Archive have shown little interest in making the film widely available despite its historic importance and strong production values. It is a good and entertaining movie, with the great actor Jean Hersholt playing an African colonial villain despised alike by his German compatriots, British neighbours and the native population.

As was common in the early sound era, the film was released in both sound-on-film and sound-on-disk versions.

At the very least, 'Mamba' should be restored for BlueRay and added to the libraries of those world-wide enthusiasts for quality films and those like me who consider Technicolor to be the finest colour process of all. This two colour step in the path to the full three strip masterpieces shows how very pleasing it can be.

It is to the legion of film enthusiasts who preserved films destined for destruction while never misusing them for commercial purposes that we owe the existence today of many great movies of that golden era from the silents to the wide screen films of the mid twentieth century. We should all be grateful for their efforts.

From a time when smoking was still good for you and political correctness was unheard of, comes Mamba. The simple but perfectly engaging plot cracks along at a reasonable pace even by modern standards, and the cast make a fine show of their transition from silent film to one of the first ever 'talkies'. The richness of the colouring is staggering given the technical limitations of the studio in its year of production, 1929.

In the screening I saw there was one deleted scene, which was apparently removed by censors in 1930 (the year of Mamba's release) – the sound for this section remained however, and was played over a number of 'stills' taken from elsewhere in the film. This had the effect of emphasising that the films dialogue was somewhat stilted, which is perhaps understandable given this was one of the earliest efforts of talking films. From the sound in this section it was evident that the cut scene might have been considered a bit too intimate for the day.

Shown in its entirety in Melbourne at The Astor in November 2011 – presumed to be the first screening of this film on the big screen for almost 80 years. Years ahead of its time – a must see for all film fans now that it is finally available for viewing again.