It is three quarters of a century since this documentary was released, but the date I am submitting these comments to IMDb is of course no accident. Seldom featured in local cinemas, such films only remain alive for their fans through DVD's and occasional TV presentations on channels such as Turner's Classic Movies,. these comments were written a day or two after TCM featured this film I want to express the appreciation all cinema enthusiasts have for the dedication shown by TCM staff not only for the selection and composition of their program but also because of their contribution to the restoration of well remembered masterpieces which we might otherwise have never seen again. Many of these films are documentary or semi-documentary in character and are not only important for the history of movies, but also for recording details of lifestyles that have long disappeared and that would otherwise be as cloudy as are the details of life in the Middle Ages or earlier. The world owes a large debt to the pioneers of documentary film such as John Grierson with films like "The Drifters" (the herring fishermen - not the characters in Michener's novel) or Robert Flaherty with "Nanook of the North." . We see their heritage today in films like "March of the Penguins" and "Himalaya", films which always have a particularly great appeal for those of us who have a strong interest in the region or culture that is being featured.
I have always been fascinated by Bali, a relatively small culture of gentle family loving people who have clung onto their historical Buddhist faith, resisting all attempts by the surrounding Muslim cultures to overwhelm them. It was one of the great highlights of my life when I was able to finally visit Bali and meet some of these people myself. Naturally I have long wanted to see this film which attempted to capture the essence of their culture at a historical period when it was changing rapidly as a result of European influences, and many people thought was unlikely to survive the impact. I would have liked to own the DVD of the restored film which I understand is of very high quality, but it is expensive and I am living on a pension with rapidly shrinking purchasing power so TCM provides an alternative solution for which I am deeply appreciative.
This film is not quite comparable with some of the other documentaries of a similar type where the film-makers sometimes spent months or even years in the community they were studying before shooting any film-stock, but it remains a very honest attempt to let the Balinese people tell their own story, largely in the form of traditional dances and ceremonies. Its photographer did an outstanding job using two strip (red and green) Technicolour film, employed almost for the last time here. This is one of the early processes which colour an underlying silver image to leave a solidarity that pure dye images have lost. The iridescent colours of modern films can often provides wonderful visual impact but only at the cost of losing the sensitivity provided by the unending graduations of gray that can be shown in a silver based image. Our old monochrome films will never lose their appeal so long as this feature can be preserved from deterioration. Today two strip red green Technicolour is often commended for its good colour rendering, but with the proviso that it is usually spoiled by green tinted skies. "Dance of the Virgins" appears to have avoided this pitfall very successfully by exposing the film sufficiently to almost burn out much of the sky colour and having the sky fringed by verdant green tropical foliage wherever possible. Whilst quite different to what we have become used to, I think most viewers would have found the colour rendering in this film very acceptable.
We were informed that the restored film, whilst primarily based on the copy in the UCLA archives, incorporates material from three copies preserved in different countries, each of which had been cut by censors in different ways to meet local expectations. It features cock fighting which was very popular in England in Shakespearian times, and continued underground for a long time after being banned. Apparently the British censors exorcised these sequences (although it would be hard to claim that cockfights are more cruel or violent than fox hunting). A different concern arose in the U.S.A. The custom in Bali at the time the film was made was for both sexes to dress stripped to the waist for working in the fields. In Shakespeare's England it was also a traditional custom for young unmarried women to wear costumes which exposed their bosom (Queen Elizabeth causes a minor scandal when following this practice at court whilst trying to overcome prejudice against an unmarried female monarch by claiming that because she was married to her country, she did not need a husband), and this practice caused no concerns for the British censors, but all close up sequences of bare breasted women were deleted from American copies of the film. Whilst this may have been a trivial problem for the restoration process, it provides an interesting and very dramatic illustration of the impact of censorship on artistic creativity, even in countries where freedom of expression is most deeply rooted.
Judged by the standard of other documentaries referred to here, it would be difficult to award this film more than 7 stars, but it remains one that I would have been exceptionally reluctant to forgo enjoying, and I cannot too strongly recommend anyone who missed it to watch out for a repeat showing.
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