East Meets West

I recently saw a 16mm print of this film at a film festival. It's a quirk of mine to time the films I watch and this one came in at 75 minutes. I've never seen a DVD of it, but this print seems to be very entertaining and was very well paced. Perhaps that missing third reel made it better. I liked it.

One of Arliss' last efforts. He again (as in THE GREEN GODDESS) plays a sultan, one who is effortlessly adept at playing games of chess - with foreign powers, each of which thinks it is clever enough to manipulate him as ruler of a small but strategic kingdom. They ought to have looked more closely at the casting and know they could never come out on top with Arliss in the role.

He is charming, clever, a master strategist, and does another impeccable job. Lucie Mannheim attempts to pull of a Dietrich impersonation and fails. The rest of the cast are acceptable.

The dvd print runs 62 minutes with a missing third reel, FYI.

Much fun and worth seeking out for a clever plot and a lesson in political maneuvering.

George Arliss channels the Raja of Rukh from THE GREEN GODDESS in a sly, rather than carnal mode. England wants an alliance with George Arliss' kingdom; so does a thinly-disguised Japan. Arliss wants neutrality and money to irrigate. His son, Ballard Berekeley, wants Lucie Mannheim, who is married to Ronald Ward.... who has just been caught smuggling booze into Arliss' very dry Muslim country and is scheduled to be hanged. As England demands its subject back, the population demands blood and Japan sees a chance to foment a revolution, who will come out on top?

In any movie with Mr. Arliss, the fun is watching him say his lines in his sly, lazy way, while everyone dashes around, trying their hardest to get past him and his scriptwriters. Miss Mannheim offers some overwrought eye candy as temporary distraction, but Mr. Arliss is ninety per cent of the show, and a very good show it is.

It is difficult to believe when our age of cinema concentrates on youth,that here we have a film whose star is 68 years old.George Arliss managed to give the same performance in every film of his that i have seen.Namely a wise old man who would always outwit his rivals by the last reel.In this film he plays an Eastern sultan who is being wooed by Britain and an Eastern power.He manages to play both at their own game and to come out on top.The running time is a brief 62 minutes which seems short for what must have been one of Gaumonts more prestigious productions.Mind you i do not think that the film would have been able to stretch much more.Rather intriguingly the next film for 3 of the cast(Laurie,Tearle and Mannheim)would be "The 39 Steps" in the same studios for Hitch.Also the Sultans son is played by Ballard Berkeley,none other than the immortal "Major" in "Fawlty Towers".

"East Meets West" is an odd item. On one hand, it is very dated and paternalistic as it shows Asians as 'strange exotics'....and has the very white George Arliss playing the Sultan of the fictional Asian country of Rungay. On the other, it speaks against such nations getting involved with foreign entanglements as well as colonialism despite being a British film! It's a strange mix, that's for sure.

The Sultan (George Arliss) spends much of the early part of the film entertaining European dignitaries. They are pushing for Rungay to pledge its allegiance to them....and the Sultan is worried this is just a pretext for colonizing or losing their freedom....which was normally the case back in the day.

The Sultan's son, was schooled in England and likes the notion of their nation coming under the sway of the British...a stark contrast to his father's policies. Additionally, the son is quite foolish, as he's fallen in love with a married woman whose husband is a gangster!! Clearly this is NOT a case of 'like father, like son' and the son seems to think more about himself than the good of his people. Not surprisingly, various wicked people want to exploit this for their own benefit...but they don't seem to understand just how sneaky and clever the Sultan is.

Overall, most enjoyable...but highly flawed as well. Worth seeing if you, like me, are a George Arliss fan....but the more politically correct folks might just wanna skip this one.