![]() ![]() We never get inside Manu's head or that of Rajguru, her wise and loyal mentor and adviser. It's all painted in broad strokes, which makes for some very pretty pictures indeed, but keeps viewers somewhat at a distance. Everything takes place on a public stage, with few scenes of personal drama or human intimacy. The film covers 20 years in Manu's life, from 1838 to 1858, and plays more like an extended pageant instead of a drama, with selected scenes from the whole saga singled out for epic treatment. The queen manages to flee and gather some troops in a neighboring state for one final battle. ![]() However, the British are aided by a treacherous relative of the late Maharajah and Jhansi soon falls. The British launch an assault on the fortress walls of Jhansi but the queen rallies her troops and some heavy artillery and holds them off. Henry Dowker, who'd been a childhood friend of Manu. Complicating things is the presence in the British officer corps of Lt. ![]() A lot happens in the course of the film's 96 minutes and before too long, Queen Jhansi, as Manu is now called, is forced to take up arms to defend her state from the British, after she's been falsely accused of abetting a massacre of British officers and their wives by mutineers. She's eight years old at the time, but Rajguru, the Maharajah's trusted adviser, trains her in all the arts of the court, including the warrior arts, and when she's 18 she marries the middle-aged Maharajah, who has maintained peaceful and cordial relations with the British officers stationed in Jhansi. It tells the true story of Jhansi Ki Rani, known to her family and childhood friends as Manu, a spunky girl picked to be wife of the Maharajah of the sovereign state of Jhansi in northwest India. At 96 min., it's missing 52 minutes from the original cut, listed on IMDb as 148 min. The version I saw is a shorter, English-dubbed version meant for western audiences and may have gotten scant release in the U.S. It's not exactly a Bollywood movie, but it does have an Indian music score and several Indian songs on the soundtrack as well as a few scenes of dance performance. Its heroes are Indians who participated in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which targeted the British East India Company, yet it's quite fair to the British themselves. It's not like any other Indian film I've ever seen, but not quite like any western historical drama either. THE TIGER AND THE FLAME (aka JHANSI KI RANI, 1953) is quite an unusual film, a big-budget historical epic billed in the credits as "India's First Picture in Color by Technicolor," but made with some western help, including noted Hollywood cinematographer Ernest Haller and English film editor Russell Lloyd. ![]()
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