Another Disrupted Vacation

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Fleeing from a plague ridden ship into the Malayan jungle are the subjects of 1934's Four Frightened People, a smaller adventure film Cecil B. DeMille made between two of his massive spectacles. It doesn't rank among his best but it is charming.

It's Pre-Code which means star Claudette Colbert has a nude scene, bathing in a waterfall when the two men, played by Herbert Marshall and William Gargan, accidentally interrupt her. Of course a chimpanzee steals her clothes and Marshall insists on carrying her out of the water before she catches an pneumonia. Herbert Marshall was a good actor and he managed to make this absurd excuse sound perfectly sincere. But I couldn't help thinking of Scottie undressing Madeleine in Vertigo, an instance of Hitchcock highlighting the subtextual perversion of scenes like this. Maybe it wasn't so subtextual; I'm inclined to think DeMille was winking broadly at us.

The fourth member of the group is played by Mary Boland, a wealthy society lady who doesn't stop lecturing everyone who can hear on morality and civility when she's captured by the natives. She carries a placid little dog throughout the film. I was amused that the animal is never even mentioned in dialogue.

Colbert's character is a mousy geographer teacher who's transformed into a bombshell by her trek through the jungle. Results from this makeover method may vary.

Four Frightened People is a pleasant diversion and it's available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a Claudette Colbert playlist.