Retrospective Film Review

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) • 45 Years Later

In Victorian India, two ne’er-do-well soldiers scheme to conquer remote lands on their own.

John Huston’s long-in-development adaptation of The Man Who Would Be King isn’t quite what it seems, much like Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 short story. On the surface, it’s a Boy’s Own tale of derring-do that pits plucky, clever British soldiers against primitive benighted heathens, and appears to have much more in common with the likes of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) or Gunga Din (1939) than with the cynical cinema of the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, in its own way, Huston’s movie (like the source material) questions the idea of imperialism, albeit from a western perspective.

After an atmospheric opening sequence in an Indian market, complete with snake-charmer and scorpion-eater, where Huston is already demonstrating how deeply his film will revel in exoticism, the story proper opens with Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer) writing a poem in his newspaper office. (Although not identified, it’s The Ballad of Boh Da Thone, penned the same year as The…