Movie review - "Elephant Walk" (1954) **1/2

A film best remembered for triggering Vivien Leigh's nervous breakdown, I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Elizabeth Taylor is probably better cast than Leigh because she's younger so it makes more sense she'd be swept off her feet by Peter Finch and go to Sri Lanka. She soon finds herself bored out of her brain with no white women to talk to, her husband turns into a bit of a tool back at home obsessed by the ghost of his father (to emphasise the Rebecca parallels there's even a servant who loved the father and doesn't rate Taylor), and always keen to get on the grog with his fellow white colonists. She's attracted to a hunky manager Dana Andrews and further stress is provided by elephants who are upset that Finch's house is built slap bang in the middle of their path, and a cholera outbreak.

This is no ad for colonialism - although the head servant tsk tsks his people for not taking their shots, the English are mostly shown to be drunken buffoons insensitive to the locals. Finch even shoots one who has disease. Yet Taylor still goes back to him at the end and he has to keep things under control when there's a cholera outbreak so I suppose that is endorsement of the system. It is occasionally reminiscent of Red Dust and John Lee Mahin was a writer for this too.

Taylor is beautiful and does her best - I quite liked her. Finch is excellent, very believable as a colonial type (arrogant, drunken, harsh, yet capable of kindness and charm); he looks like he's a man of his hands, whereas Dana Andrews doesn't really - but Andrews has a strong masculine presence and he's a good foil to Finch, a genuine threat. You don't know who she's going to wind up with at the end, which gives some sort of tension (although you guess they will make it because they are married).