Mamba

In my very early days I enjoyed watching all those golden oldies starring Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. Mamba, shot in color and with sound (it was the first all color all talking movie which was not a musical), reminds me fondly of those long gone days. Mamba is for sure not a movie of interest for many, but if you want to watch one very old adventure movie in a colonial setting, digging deeper into the history of movie making, Mamba will give you a splendid time. Exact rate: 6 + 1 for nostalgic reasons only.

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.

The comment from film library below is true and it is one of the most important discoveries in lost cinema. MAMBA is found intact and in color and on 35mm and the print exists here in Australia. In the tech specs info for this film, there were two main versions made, as silent one and two sound versions such was the transition of the time.... a photo-phone sound one and another sound version with the Vitaphone talking gramophone discs. This version discovered here is the sound-disc version and some discs exist here and some with a collector in the US. I now have been fortunate enough to actually see ALL of the film and the color is glorious: peacock colors and opalescent tangerine reds and cobalt blues... and excellent jungle colors and military uniforms... What a find! the sound is now matched and restoration imminent.....applause to our friends Murray and Pat xx

The re-discovery of a complete 35mm tech print of MAMBA is a major event for the world to share....so now we can share it: Talkie Historian Jonas Nordin and Myself PAUL BRENNAN with the assistance of the fabulous Astor theatre St Kilda (Melbourne) re presented MAMBA on a huge movie screen for the first time in 80- years on Nov 21st 2011. It was a gala night with hundreds in attendance who thrilled to the slideshow of the history of Tiffany productions then saw the whole 78 minute print with matched sound from the 9 discs held by UCLA. It was their office who assisted in providing the whole soundtrack in which we also found a censored sequence. MAMBA will have a US premiere in March 2012 courtesy of the Vitaphone Project office.

To update the other reviews on this site, the film exists in its entirety in two-strip Technicolor. The owners also have five sound discs (5 through 8). UCLA possesses two reels (1,9) and all nine sound discs. Attempts are underway to combine these two sources and hopefully with UCLA's track record of superb restorations of early Technicolor films, MAMBA will soon be available for viewing once again for the first time in eighty years.

Initial viewing of reel five and almost all of reel six reveals a stellar performance by Jean Hersholt as the villainous bore, August Bolte, and a sensitive take by aristocratic Eleanor Boardman as Helen. Ralph Forbes is rather stiff and affected as the so-called hero, Karl Von Reiden. The colors are lovely - reds and greens predominate, but the flesh tones are quite authentic.

This seems to be a treasure, awaiting interest and funding for a proper restoration.

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.