As Japan was to the American cinema of the late 1950s, Africa was in the early 1960s: a vast “other,” a site of sometimes scary, sometimes alluring rituals, a repository of liberal guilt proffering “understanding” in a violent world. Through Sayonara and Teahouse of the August Moon and House of Bamboo, cinema eventually made the transition to Hatari (1962)Zulu (1964) and The Last Safari (1967) and that great popular masterpiece, Dark of the Sun (1968). Arguably the premiere film within this trend is the near-silent The Naked Prey, now receiving a prestigious release on DVD via Criterion (The Criterion Collection disc No. 415, 96 minutes, $39.95, 2.35:1, mono, supplements include audio commentary, trailer, text feature on the music with music cues, and audio only feature of source material, with a 32-page insert with cast and crew, chapter titles, transfer credits, essay by Michael Atkinson and interview with Cornel Wilde; street date Tuesday 15 January, 2008).

The Naked Prey was a particular favorite of American boys in the late 1960s, among whom it was something of a cult item. In fact, you can still see its influence today, in the strenuous primitivism of Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo movies. The Naked Prey veers toward art rather than action, really, as it tells a tale of man against nature. The nameless hero, played by the film’s director, Cornel Wilde, is a safari leader in mid-1800s Africa. Thanks to the foolhardiness of his client (safari clients are always foolhardy and reckless), the group is disrupted by a very angry tribe. Various judgments are visited upon the members of the safari, with Wilde’s being that he is given a head start whereupon a handful of warriors will hunt him down. The bulk of the film is given over to the relentless pursuit and the cat and mouse game of the hunt itself (influenced emotionally by the film The Most Dangerous Game, but officially by the story of one John Colter, who was hunted in similar fashion by the Blackfoot Indians around the same time), with the film comprising a visual essay on the indifference of nature and man’s fragile place within its food chain.

Cornel Wilde is an interesting case as an actor-turned-director, an act for which he has received no respect. A Jewish Hungarian immigrant, Wilde was an expert fencer (he was on the 1936 Olympic team but dropped out for unstated reasons), which proved to be his entry into acting, first as a fencing coordinator, then as an actor in actioners, and then, rather quickly and mysteriously, as an Oscar-nominated leading man in a film about Franz Liszt. Unfortunately, though Wilde was pretty in a Tyrone Power sort of way, he was somewhat inert, not unlike his true analog Victor Mature, and his descendant, Stallone. Perhaps aware of these limitations, Wilde gravitated to production and director, his company making one of the best film noirs, The Big Combo and Wilde himself directing eight features from 1955 to 1975 (he died in 1989). In this he resembles no less than Ida Lupino, an actress of intellectual ambitions who also had around eight credited and uncredited titles on her filmography. Both performers used their directorial work to explore ideas and social problems not found amid the mainstream pabulum. Both were intellectually ambitious in the manner of Hollywood actors who buck up against the implacable commerciality of the movie business. Despite impediments and critical indifference, they struggled on.

It is thus perhaps fitting that The Naked Prey was popular among kids, and became loosely categorized as a kids movie, especially possibly thanks to its National Geographic peep into a culture where dress is not required. One can imagine a young Stallone watching it in his early 20s and finding inspiration in the then 55-year-old Wilde stripping bare and running through the arid brush of the South African veldt. Was the young Stallone immune, however, to the film’s embedded political statements? An early sequence rivals The Rules of the Game for its wordless indictment of cruelty to animals, in this case elephants. What’s delicate about the blend of action and ideas that they are fully integrated into the substance of the narrative and, given the virtually wordless script, are purely visual.

The Naked Prey comes in a lovely, colorful widescreen transfer with mono sound. The supplemental material is modest but helpful. Besides the lengthy trailer, there is also a reading of an account of John Colter’s escape, read by Paul Giamatti (financing encouraged Wilde to transplant the Old West tale to Africa), and an account of all the music cues in the film, authentic African music played on African instruments by Africans, along with tribal music actually recorded by Wilde.

Since Criterion likes to release its directors in pairs, there is probably another Wilde film in the works, possibly Beach Red, which is already on DVD, or Sword of Lancelot, also on DVD and released by Universal, with whom Criterion has a relationship. But in the end, it’s hard to guess. As usual, the main supplement is an audio commentary track, this one by Criterion standby Stephen Prince, who has written books on Kurosawa and screen violence. Prince is surprisingly knowledgeable about a film that for others would have been difficult to research, but to which Prince brings what sounds like a lifetime’s knowledge (he’s even looked at the continuity script). With what sounds like a slight Southern accent, Prince brings too much of a “reading from a text” quality to his presentation, but the material is extremely well-organized: he is so immersed in the film that he knows when to take a detour into the career of Wilde or his co-star Ken Gampu (who later appeared in The Gods Must be Crazy). Prince only makes one error that I could detect, which is attributing the film Detour to Joseph H. Lewis rather than Edgar G. Ulmer (at around the 48-minute point), but otherwise it is a highly informative and much recommended yak track. The Naked Prey also comes with a 32-page insert with cast and crew information, 21 chapter titles, digital transfer info and credits, and an essay by Michael Atkinson and an interview with Cornel Wilde (both purposely unread by this reviewer). The Naked Prey retails for $39.95, and hits the street on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.