She

She (1935)

From H. Rider Haggard's weird, wondrous story of the beautiful woman who bathed in flame and lived 500 years .. at last to find her first love at this very hour!

Leo Vincey, told by his dying uncle of a lost land visited 500 years ago by his ancestor, heads out with family friend Horace Holly to try to discover the land and its secret of immortality, said to be contained within a mystic fire. Picking up Tanya, a guide's daughter, in the frozen Russian arctic, they stumble upon Kor, revealed to be a hidden civilization ruled over by an immortal queen, called She, who believes Vincey is her long-lost lover John Vincey, Leo's ancestor.

Date of release
1935-07-12
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (41)
Runtime
1h 41m
Genres
Adventure, Fantasy
Director
Irving Pichel, Lansing C. Holden

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: She: A History of Adventure

She is a 1935 American adventure film produced by Merian C. Cooper. It is based on the 1887 novel of the same name by H. Rider Haggard. A man named Leo Vincey travels with his friend and the daughter of a guide to a mysterious place in Northern Siberia, where his ancestor reported finding the secret to immortality. They discover a lost world where a woman named She Who Must Be Obeyed - known as "She" - rules over an exotic civilization.

Production

In July 1932, Universal Studios announced they had bought the rights to the story. John L. Balderston had written a script, and changed the ending into a tragedy where all of the main characters die. This displeased the president of Universal, who tried to sell the rights to the adaptation, which he had bought. The original story was set in Africa and included a marriage between Leo, who is white, and a native black woman.

RKO hoped that She would follow Cooper's previous success, King Kong. Cooper had originally intended to shoot the film in color, but budget cuts by RKO forced him to shoot the film in black and white at the last minute. This film, along with The Last Days of Pompeii, were part of a two-picture agreement with Cooper, with the initial agreement stating that each film would be made for $1 million each.

Cooper and Irving Pichel had previously co-directed The Most Dangerous Game, and Pichel had previously directed Before Dawn when Cooper hired him to direct She. Landing C. Holden, an architectural designer, co-directed the film to ensure a unified vision for the film's visuals, which combine Art Deco sensibilities with exotic influences from Greek, Egyptian, and Mayan art. Over 1500 conceptual drawings were created for the film.

Ruth Rose collaborated with Cooper to create an adaptation focused on adventure and romance, with the city set inside an inactive volcano. Rose constructed a language for Kor inspired by Arabic. Dudley Nichols wrote additional dialogue for the script. Rose made several changes to the original story.

Mario Larrinaga was responsible for several matte paintings used in the special effects. The view of the sled dogs running across a frozen lake was a combination of live action with one of Larrinaga's paintings. He also painted the sabre-tooth tiger and its victims in ice, which was projected through stereopticon plates onto the set. Miniatures were used for the multiple deaths in the avalanche scene.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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