Harry Black et le tigre

Part Snows Of Kilimanjaro, part Moby Dick, Harry Black And The Tiger will never attain the literary ranks of those Hemingway and Melville classics. Still the book turned into a good movie with Stewart Granger giving a good performance in his first film after he was loose from his MGM Hollywood contract.

There's a tiger on the prowl in a remote corner of India and the government has contracted white hunter Stewart Granger for the job of killing it. There's not much you can do with big cats once they've gotten an appetite for human flesh. But the job gets personal with Granger when he discovers the tiger has chosen for its hunting grounds, the vicinity of a tea plantation run by Anthony Steel and his wife Barbara Rush who's always had a thing for Granger in any event.

There are some flashback sequences telling how the three main players have arrived to the point they are now. Steel did not go through with his part of an escape plan during World War II and as a result Granger lost a leg. And both are in love with Rush, but Granger bows out and now they're thrown together again.

Steel was weak during the war, but now Granger questions his own fitness for the job especially after getting mauled by the tiger. Still he has developed his own Ahab like fixation on the beast.

I have to say Stewart Granger sure looks the part, a carryover when he scored such a big hit in King Solomon's Mines. Later on he did a film called The Last Safari in the Sixties and it was hardly a success.

Look for I.S. Johar and Kamala Devi as Granger's guide and his Indian nurse when he is recovering from his encounter with the tiger. Devi has some really sharp observations about what she's around her.

Not the best jungle films, but the Indian cinematography is nice and fans of the leads will be pleased enough.

"The Ghost and the Darkness" (1996) is a true story about hunters who sought to kill murderous lions that killed hundreds of people in Africa. I mention this because "Harry Black and the Tiger" is very similar, though not based on a true story AND is set in India. In this case, a rogue tiger has killed a lot of locals and Harry Black (Stewart Granger) is hired to track the animal down and kill it. However, this turns out to be very difficult and deadlier than anticipated...as well as creating lots of opportunities for flashbacks about Harry during WWII and his abortive romance.

The biggest plus about this movie is that it actually was filmed in India....and it looks very good as a result. It also, fortunately, lacks the awful stock footage you often see in such films and the tiger portions are tense. It also is benefitted from a modestly interesting romance and backstory. Well worth seeing and very well made.

This is strictly run of the mill stuff, but it passes the time if anything, filmed in India it has good photography and stars one of my favourite actors stewart granger, he looks like his character in 'king solomon's mines' - alan quatermain, he also has a faithful sidekick called Babu.

The story is about a killer tiger on the loose in a local community and the various problems it causes to its captors.In the film granger's character has a steel leg, he lost his real leg in the war, so we get a few exciting flashbacks of his war experiences which are done nicely, these scenes would have to be the best in the film.

Needless to say,the star is neither Granger nor Rush, but India : the filming on location is absolutely wonderful ,with an effective sense of space of the wide screen and color, a good use of the natives and an Indian actor as the first supporting actor.

The screenplay blends adventure movie and melodrama with mixed results ;sometimes Granger recalls Gregory Peck in "the snows of Kilimandjaro" (1952):cured by Barbara Rush who plays the role of a married with child Susan Hayward ,he remembers his past during WW2,(Spanish civil war for Peck) , when her husband ,then a coward brother in arm costs him his leg. There are also snatches of 'the lost weekend" (1945)when Rush tries to get Granger out of alcohol hell.

The love affair is bland and not very convincing (the the absence of Jim ,a careerist with bright prospects ,does not help :however ,when the boy tells his daddy that a father's got to be a hero and urges him to follow Harry in his tiger hunt (where he dismally fails and shows his cowardice again) this is a good beginning.

The tiger ,as the film progresses,will become Harry's obsession ,even injured ,crippled and alcoholic , he does not renege on his task : the tiger claimed too many lives and love takes a back seat to this endless hunt.

As a boy growing up in the 1950's, I was totally fascinated by Great White Hunters and exotic locations such as Africa and India. Stewart Granger was also one of my favorite actors, so this movie quickly became one of my most well-liked. Granger's character of Harry Black is far from infallible. Instead, he is a man who survived WWII, but is still at war with his personal demons as well as a man-eating tiger. Not quite as exciting as some of Granger's other action/adventure efforts (i.e., King Solomon's Mines), it still has the ability to transport the viewer away to a different time, country and culture in such a way that I actually felt as if I was there. My son was a missionary in India, and he felt the same way. Although some of the flashbacks seem to drag a bit (and were much less interesting to a boy of ten than the action scenes), they are nonetheless integral to the plot, and the sexual tension between Harry (Granger) and Christian (Barbara Rush) is palpable. The landscape and wildlife photography is exquisite, and the movie does a fine job of showing the people of India and their culture in a non-prejudicial way. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the relationship of Harry and his gun-bearer, Bapu (I.S. Johar), which appeared to be built on mutual respect and admiration in spite of the racial prejudice that I'm sure existed at the time between many of the British and the native peoples. This has been a strong point of the characters Granger has played in other movies such as King Solomon's Mines. The only weaknesses I noticed were in some of the scenes where Harry and Bapu are riding along in a jeep or Harry and Christian are riding in a buggy and they are obviously superimposed on stock backgrounds. I'm not sure why the director felt this was necessary after going to the trouble of filming on location in India. All in all, I think this movie is definitely a "must see" for fans of classic action/adventure films.