Gunga Din

Gunga Din (1939)

Timing: 1:57 (117 min)

6.48/10
147

6.426/10
610

7.2/10
14000

All about film

Video 1

Photo 10

Actors and characters

Release date

1939-01-26

Country

United States

Production

RKO Radio Pictures

Genre

Adventure, War, Action, Comedy

Budget

$1 910 000

Revenue

$2 807 000

Website

Director

George Stevens

Actors

Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, Joan Fontaine, Montagu Love, Robert Coote, Abner Biberman, Lumsden Hare
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

George Stevens

Operator

Joseph H. August

Composer

Alfred Newman

Artist

Perry Ferguson

Audition

Editing

Henry Berman, John Lockert
All team (33)

• According to the script, Kipling himself was supposed to appear at the end of the film as a chronicler of the exploits of British soldiers. The writer's widow strongly opposed his portrayal in the film, and scenes involving actor R. Sheffield (playing Kipling) had to be cut. Only in the 1980s, during the restoration of the film, did Ted Turner (who owned the rights to the old RKO films) order these scenes to be restored.
• Five screenwriters, including future Nobel laureate William Faulkner, worked to turn a hundred lines of verse into a dynamic 120-minute film. The main screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, based the plot not so much on Kipling's poem as on his story "Three Soldiers".
• The filmmakers managed to find a landscape resembling northern India in the Sierra Nevada. The role of Ballantyne was originally intended for Cary Grant, but he was more attracted to the figure of a treasure hunter, for which Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was invited. The final casting was decided by a coin toss thrown into the air by director Stevens.
• In 1999, "Ganga Din" was included in the National Registry of the most significant films. Despite the imperialistic prejudices of the colonial era inherent in the original material and some drawn-out scenes of military maneuvers, this film had a huge impact on the further development of the adventure genre.
• Five screenwriters, including future Nobel laureate William Faulkner, worked to turn a hundred lines of poetry into a dynamic 120-minute film. The main screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, based the plot not so much on Kipling's poem as on his story "The Three Soldiers."