Themes: Love Triangles, Interracial/Cross-Cultural Romance, Fish Out of Water
Main Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Dana Andrews, Peter Finch, Abraham Sofaer, Abner Biberman
Release Year: 1954
Country: US
Run Time: 103 minutes
Plot
Elephant Walk was several weeks into production when the film's original leading lady, Vivien Leigh, was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor (you can still see Leigh in a few long shots). Based on a novel by Robert Standish, the film casts Taylor as Ruth Wiley, the new bride of solemn plantation owner John Wiley (Peter Finch). At first thrilled at the prospect of living in the wilds of Ceylon, Ruth rapidly becomes a beautiful bird in a gilded cage. When American overseer Dick Carver (Dana Andrews) arrives on the scene, Ruth falls in love. Before she can leave her husband, though, the region is devastated by cholera. Making things worse, the local elephants go on a rampage, destroying her husband's mansion, which his father had maliciously built in the middle of the pachyderm's ancient right of way. Fraught with sexual symbolism, Elephant Walk works on a high-gloss soap opera level. The climactic stampede, however, is disappointingly filmed on a studio interior set, robbing what should have been a rousing climax of much of its credibility. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Lushly photographed and featuring a stunning (and stunningly costumed) Elizabeth Taylor, Elephant Walk is a fairly ridiculous melodrama that promises much more than it delivers. Fans of soap operas set in exotic locales will lap it up, and it does provide some guilty pleasures, but it's ultimately too shallow to sustain interest. Worse, despite everyone's best efforts to make this a sizzling romance, the heat never really ignites. Part of the blame lies with director William Dieterle. While he has certainly paid a great deal of attention to the film's production values, giving it a sumptuous look, and while he has provided a pace that keeps things moving at a decent clip, he doesn't seem to have spent a lot of time understanding the characters -- or helping the actors to understand them. The talented Peter Finch wanders around rather aimlessly, and Taylor and Dana Andrews are effective but essentially superficial. Still, if one is in an undemanding mood and willing to just drink in the beauty of the sets, costumes, and Taylor, one could do worse than Elephant Walk. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
It was originally intended to star husband and wife team of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (with Olivier in the Finch role). However Olivier was already committed to the project The Beggar's Opera (1953). Leigh was enthusiastic about the role and continued in her husband's absence, but she was forced to withdraw from production shortly after filming began in Colombo, Ceylon, as a result of bipolar disorder. According to Leonard Maltin's annual Movie Guide book, Leigh can be seen in some long shots that were not re-filmed after Elizabeth Taylor replaced her.
Colonial tea planter John Wiley, visiting England at the end of World War II, wins and weds lovely English rose Ruth and takes her home to Elephant Walk, Ceylon, where the local elephants have a grudge against the plantation because it blocks their migrating path. Ruth's delight with the tropical wealth and luxury of her new home is tempered by isolation as the only white woman in the district; by her husband's occasional imperious arrogance; by a mutual physical attraction with plantation manager Dick Carver; and by the hovering, ominous menace of the hostile elephants. The elephants end up destroying the plantation in a stampede along with a fire.
Maltin gave the film 2 stars out of 4, and made one of his pithier critiques: "Pachyderm stampede climax comes none too soon." A major plot element in the film is that the tea plantation's manor, where the film's action occurs, had been built in the middle of a path that migrating Indian elephants had previously used.
Man by the Roadside •Behind the Altar (with Julius Brandt) •The Saint and Her Fool •Sex in Chains •The Brandenburg Arch (with Max Knaake) •Triumph of Love •Frühlingsrauschen •Das Schweigen im Walde
