Mogambo (1953)

I am not comparing Mogambo to Naked Jungle because Mogambo is a genre film, but specifically because it is not.

I am going to use this film basically as a point of comparison with The Naked Jungle (from now on TNJ,) with which is shares some resemblances.

It plays with some of the same tropes, but it also has some key differences.

Mogambo, for example was sold partially as "The Battle of the Sexes!" which feels right up TNJ's alley.

The battle of the sexes is indeed more overt here than in Hatari! which is a similarly set film.

The basic points of Mogambo shared by TNJ are these: Man's man lives in jungle isolation, strange female comes to visit/stay, there's sparks aplenty and after some conflict they end up together.

In both cases the jungle is simply a separate place where sexual passion explodes but unlike TNJ, Mogambo's jungle fails to generate any feeling of metaphoric significance.

The Mogambo jungle is just a place, like any other, where one may travel.

In TNJ, the jungle is not only geography but also a place to tame, a place of the subconscious, a state of mind.

Victor Marswell does not fight the jungle, whereas Leiningen does.

While in TNJ Leiningen apparently left civilization to avoid (the) women (he fears,) Victor Marswell (the Clark Gable character) lives in the jungle to indulge in his own women related vices.

He manages to have two affairs (one with a married woman) during the course of the movie.

And just so there is no doubt that he indeed is there in the jungle to indulge, he shares his isolation (unlike Leinengen) with two other characters (Philip Stainton and Eric Pohlman.)

One whose vice is food and the other whose vice is alcohol, with both cases made abundantly clear and even noted by other characters.

These three men manage, while isolated from civilization, to indulge in weaknesses or vices in substances which it would seem should be absent, yet somehow exist in abundance.

It could also be that the Brownie and Boltchak characters have successfully replaced their need for sex with excessive food and/or alcoholic drink.

Another element which both pictures share and may only be accidental is the need to satisfy the requirements of the Code.

This particular element is significant because it is bound to artificially affect the story, its characters, their motivations and their believability in unexpected ways.

For example, Leiningen marries an unknown woman from afar.

This marriage frees the characters' behavior somewhat.

Whatever (sex related) event happens during the course of the story is now guaranteed to be fully "legal."

But in addition, it also changes Leiningen's character: Why would he marry, unknowing?

Why would he seek women it is later established he fears?

Just what is it that Joanna is seeking and why does she go into the jungle to seek it?

Other questions may come out which complicate things and may actually help define or round out a new character for Leiningen (and for Joanna as well.)

Satisfying the Code may be accidental (if this is indeed what it is,) but it actually adds layers which otherwise would not be there.

In Mogambo, however, the Code becomes a liability.

The Code element is also there in the (intrusive) presence of a priest who must be visited to absolve the sins committed by a single socialite (Ava Gardner, DVDBeaver calls her a 'call girl') on her process of becoming a "good girl."

The thing about this playgirl is that her very reasons for being in the jungle define her: she was apparently seeking to hook up with a Maharajah, who by mere accident ends up missing from the story and she hooks up with Marswell instead.

When she is insulted because Marswell offers to pay her trip back it is almost unbelievable, as the audience is bound to question just exactly was her plan for the Maharajah if not exactly more of the same - that is to get wealth from sexual favors provided?

Later the priest is also there to legalize Marswell's and Honeybear's (Gardner) relationship.

The story conclusion is unbelievable because neither character seems to gain much from this marriage (she is a gold diggin' city gal who ends up in the jungle with no money, he is a player who ends up not with the one he "madly loves" but with a one night stand he did not really want and dumped some time back.)

But hey, at least they are legal now.

The married couple (Grace Kelly & Donald Sinden) fares even worse, the cheating wife is unexpectedly dumped at the last minute by Marswell and remains stuck in a joyless, loveless, sexless marriage and the cuckolded husband goes back home with a frustrated, cheating wife.

Great. (The original pre-Code version of this story Red Dust is bound to be more satisfying in this respect.)

Other pre-Code jungle pics are, of course, the first Weismuller Tarzans in which we have sex occur naturally and outside of wedlock.

But Tarzan is himself a child of the jungle and neither exploits nor is in conflict with it.

And in this case Jane herself is embraced by the jungle just as she embraces the natural urges and passion associated with it.

An interesting couple of almost throwaway instances have a comparison of the two women with the jungle cats (which are hunted and caged in the movie.)

Honeybear paces the floor with the same rhythms a lion paces his cage, and Mrs. Nordley (Kelly) actually falls inside of a leopard pit.

In TNJ the native Marabunta ants seemingly stand for natural female forces (which the story sets to be beaten or submitted.)

With these comparisons it is clear that TNJ is at the very least tangentially a genre film or simply more psychologically symbolic or with more layers of psychological awareness if no overt fantastic content than a similar potboiler, jungle romance picture.

*And if there is any doubt about that I challenge anyone to find an earlier discussion on film where female genital mutilation is discussed (even if non-explicitly.)

That it happens here has got to be some kind of a cultural milestone.