Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
About Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
On the jungle edge of Siam, Kru plants rice with his wife Chantui, their boy Nah, their girl Ladah, a goat, a gibbon, and a water buffalo. A leopard goes for the goat and a tiger kills the buffalo. Kru calls in neighboring hunters and they kill a large tiger. Then the chang, elephants, smash his hut and the next village. He leads a hunt that drives the herd into a corral and starts to break them for work. He goes back to rebuild the house. The jungle is still there.
Cast & crew
More about Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky presented this Cooper-Schoedsack production. Paramount had signed it, then called Hazards of the Jungle, for the 1926–27 season. The shoot in Siam ran about eighteen months; cutting and titles brought the job to twenty-one months, with production dated 1924–1926. Achmed Abdullah wrote the titles. Louis R. Loeffler edited. John Douglas Eames, in The Paramount Story (1985), lists the cost at $70,000. Paramount Famous Lasky opened it at the Rivoli in New York on April 29, 1927.
Themes
Making
In Amateur Movie Makers (July 1927) Merian C. Cooper said they did not sit in the jungle and shoot whatever happened: "[Chang] is as carefully constructed as anything made in a studio… We didn't create customs, but we chose what we wanted for the drama."
Reviews
Variety (May 4, 1927) called Chang "a remarkable moving picture" and singled out the elephant stampede. Mordaunt Hall, in The New York Times, called it "vivid and thrilling."
Audiences
The Rivoli run lasted nine weeks and drew more than 301,000 people by July 1, 1927. The California Theatre in San Francisco took in $27,600, which Variety reported as a house record.
Look
Ernest B. Schoedsack photographed the eighteen-month Siam shoot with an all-metal Debrie camera.
Technique
The Rivoli premiere used Paramount's Magnascope: a larger screen and a wide-angle lens on the projector, the process first tried on Old Ironsides in December 1926.
Music
Hugo Riesenfeld wrote the score.
Preservation
The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database lists the film as extant. On October 19, 1927, Film Daily reported that a print was given to the British Museum to be sealed for fifty years and shown again in 1977. It played the Kansas Silent Film Festival on February 26, 2011.
Notes
- Chang is the Siamese word for elephant.
- An onscreen credit calls the cast "Natives of the wild: who have never seen a motion picture; Wild Beasts: who have never had to fear a modern rifle; The Jungle.
- Kru is billed as the pioneer, Chantui as his wife, Nah as their little boy, and Ladah as their little girl.
- Variety on May 4, 1927, called it "the first animal picture [to have] a scenario.
- It played the Rivoli for nine weeks. Film Daily reported more than 301,000 admissions there by July 1, 1927.
- Variety on August 3 and 10, 1927, reported $27,600 in ticket sales at the California Theatre in San Francisco.
Awards
- Certificate of honorable mention, Unique and Artistic Picture, 1st Academy Awards (1929). Sunrise won the category.
Scenes
- A leopard attacks the goat, and a tiger kills the water buffalo.
- The elephant herd smashes Kru's hut and the neighboring village.
- The hunters drive the herd into a corral.
Influenced by
- Grass (1925)
Influenced
- King Kong (1933)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Chang A Drama of the Wilderness (1927).webm)
- Image Entertainment DVD (November 21, 2000)
- Milestone Film & Video DVD (October 29, 2013)
Quotes
Before the most ancient civilization arose, before the first city in the world was built, before man trod the earth — then, as now, there stretched across vast spaces of farther Asia a great green threatening mass of vegetation… the Jungle.
