The Indian Tomb (1959)

A German architect runs away with the maharajah of Eschnapur's fiancee but is caught and thrown in the dungeon, while his relatives arrive from Europe looking for him and the maharajah's brother is scheming to usurp the throne.

Director:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Werner Jörg Lüddecke (screenplay), Thea von Harbou (novel)

Stars:

Debra Paget, Paul Hubschmid, Walther Reyer

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Debra Paget	...	Seetha
Paul Hubschmid	...	Harald Berger / Henri Mercier in French Version
Walther Reyer	...	Maharadjaj Chandra
Claus Holm	...	Dr. Walter Rhode
Sabine Bethmann	...	Irene Rhode
René Deltgen	...	Prince Ramigani
Valéry Inkijinoff	...	Yama (as Inkijinoff)
Jochen Brockmann	...	Padhu - Ramigani's ally
Richard Lauffen	...	Bhowana
Jochen Blume	...	Asagara - the Engineer
Helmut Hildebrand	...	Ramigani's servant
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Friedrich Schoenfelder	...	Narrator (voice)

Storyline

Harald Berger and his Indian lover, the temple dancer Seetha, desperately flee from the shikaris (cavalry) of Eschanapur's maharajah Chandra, who burn a whole village just for letting them pass invoking traditional hospitality. A spider weaves a web so the trackers won't look for them in a Shiva temple, but she is caught outside, he left for dead after a steep fall into a crocodile-infested water. Meanwhile his sister Irene and brother-in-law Dr. Walter Rhode, the architect who refuses to build a tomb to bury Seetah alive for scorning the ruler's love before the hospital he was asked for, guess the truth, and try to make their assigned Indian servant Asagara talk, who dreads incriminating his sovereign. She can't believe Chandra's claim Harald was killed on a tiger-hunt, and the architect finds the bloody shirt he produces doesn't have the button she mended. Prince Ramigani plots seizing Chandra's throne with rajah Padhu, courtiers and the corrupt General Dagh, as soon as Chandra ...

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Plot Keywords:

priest | stabbed in the back | spider web | hinduism | culture clash | 

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Taglines:

Der deutsche Millionen-Film!

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Genres:

Adventure | Romance

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Did You Know?

Trivia

a In the French-dubbed version, known as "Le tombeau hindou" (released in July 1959), Debra Paget is dubbed by Michèle Montel, Paul Hubschmid by Michel Roux, Walther Reyer by Jean-Claude Michel, Claus Holm by Daniel Clérice, Sabine Bethmann by Nadine Alari, René Deltgen by Yves Brainville and Jochen Blume by Roger Rudel.

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Goofs

It takes a spider an hour to construct a web but the man sized one in the cave mouth is constructed in just over a minute.

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Crazy Credits

Based on an original story by Thea Von Harbou made famous by Richard Eichberg.

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Connections

Featured in The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015)

User Reviews

"A gilded cage"

Please see also my review of The Tiger of Eschnapur.

The Indian Tomb was the second part of a pair of pictures directed by Fritz Lang, his first German productions since the 1930s, adapted from a screenplay he had himself worked on nearly thirty years earlier. The two of them should really be considered one whole work as much as were his two-part epics from the silent era, Dr Mabuse: Der Spieler (1922) and Die Nibelungen (1924). These earlier opuses were among the most prestigious works made, not only in Germany but anywhere in the world at the time. However this Indian diptych of the late-50s, a product of the drastically different post-war German film industry, looks like some cheap and cheerful Euro B-flick, at least at first glance.

The Indian Tomb and its forerunner The Tiger of Eschnapur certainly bear many hallmarks of a trashy proto-exploitation feature. The Indian characters are played rather unconvincingly by Europeans in "brownface", the special effects are often laughable (stuffed tigers in part one, which are outdone by plastic cobras in part two), a bit of partial female nudity, and a fast-paced plot of action and romance with more than of a few plot holes, imagination-stretchers, and complete suspensions of logic – the most stupendous of which has to be the unexplained concept that lepers are actually zombies. To make matters worse, the two pictures were cut down into one movie by American International Pictures, Roger Corman's distributor, and for years this was all English-speaking audiences could see of them. Today however we are lucky enough to have fully-restored versions of both parts available to us, including a subtitled German version, which is far preferable to the atrocious English dub, assuming you can get over the illogic of Indians speaking to each other in German. Now at last we are able to rediscover and re-evaluate Fritz Lang's final masterpiece.

On closer inspection, these two pictures are not quite so low in their values and appeal as one might think. For a start, the fact that Europeans play Indians is not really so different to westerners playing Arabs in Lawrence of Arabia. And there would be female nudity in Blow-up, and that is considered arty! The cast, while not exactly award-worthy, are uniformly decent, with the standout being Walter Reyer's eerily underplayed portrayal of the unbalanced Maharajah. There's a fabulous musical score by Gerhard Becker, and although admittedly the invented "Uncle Pat" song sounds more like a Gregorian chant than a Irish folk ballad, when Becker interpolates it into the main score on sweeping strings it makes a wonderful, aching love theme. The plot too is more than just your typical fight-a-minute no-brainer. While far from realistic its rip-roaring adventure has many strands to it, such as the political infighting of the fictional eastern province and the Maharajah's descent into jealousy-fuelled madness. It is of course aspects like this that would have been ripe for the chop when the pictures were re-edited in the US.

And now let us turn to the contribution of Herr Lang himself. Although he spent most of his twenty years in Hollywood making cheap and sometimes nasty B-flicks, he never lost the flair and professionalism of his early German career, at which time he was rightly regarded as one of the most important talents at UFA studios. He was always at his best presenting adventure stories tinged with a slightly dark, paranoid streak which, while unfortunately being the subject of auterist psychobabble, mainly serves to heighten the sense of danger and excitement. As in The Tiger of Eschnapur the vast, angular sets are given prominence, with shots composed so that the walls seem to press in on all sides. There's often a passage or open door at the back of the room, suggesting that the heroes could be crept up upon from behind at any moment. Early on there's a shot where Walter and Irene are in their quarters, and a net curtain covers one corner of the frame. By cinematic convention this looks like a point-of-view shot, which gives this unnerving feeling that the couple are being watched. The carefully orchestrated action finale, in which all the various elements – the rebellion, Harald's escape, the flooding of the catacombs – reach a crescendo is reminiscent of the climactic scenes of Metropolis and Die Nibelungen. It is really such a good thing that Lang, the man who brought our dreams and our nightmares to the screen with such vibrancy, did not end his career in lower-end Hollywood productions. His Indian epic is a glorious and worthy tribute to his silent-era heyday.

Details

Country:

West Germany France Italy

Language:

German

Release Date:

October 1960 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Indian Tomb

Filming Locations:

Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

Box Office

Budget:

DEM20,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$4,401, 29 September 2019

Gross USA:

$4,673

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$4,673

Company Credits

Production Co:

Central Cinema Company Film (CCC), Rizzoli Film, Regina Production

Technical Specs

Runtime:

102 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo (Westrex Recording System)

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor) Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1