Legong: Dance of the Virgins (review)

This DVD is truly a feast for connoisseurs of old films by Westerners about Southeast Asia. The title piece is from Bali, a restored Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) by the Marquis Henry de la Falaise de la Coudray. Next is Legong again, but with a somewhat more authentic score added in 2001. Then comes a filmed discussion by Richard Marriot and I Made Subandi about how they collaborated to make the new score. Next is a print of Robert Snyder's Gods of Bali (1952) and finally, Henry de la Falaise's French Indochina film Kliou (1937).

Legong was shot as a silent film in 1933 when Bali was just being discovered by Western filmmakers, upscale tourists, artists, and anthropologists. Bali had everything: dramatic tropical scenery, a visually rich culture that presented dramatic dance and music, an apparently stable colonial rule, and a population that was beautiful by European standards and whose women could easily be filmed with bare breasts.

The film was made by people famous in their time: Constance Bennett was producer, her husband the Marquis Henry de la Falaise directed, the Oscar-winning William H. Greene was cinematographer, and the intertitles were designed by the painter Miguel Covarrubias. It was filmed in two-color Technicolor, which does justice to Bali in this restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The liner notes indicate that the nudity was censored for the U.S. release and the cockfight violence was censored for the British release, but this fine restoration brings back both breasts and gamecocks.

The story of Legong is hopelessly sentimental: handsome young gamelan musician arrives to play in the village gamelan orchestra; the legong-dancing daughter of the village head falls in love with him, but he in turn falls for her half-sister, who also dances the legong. These two elope and the first dancer commits suicide.

But it is the surprisingly good ethnography that really distinguishes the film. We are led through highlights of Balinese culture: markets, temples, various kinds of dance performances, the cockfight of course, and finally a great multiple cremation ceremony. And the intertitles provide just enough information without too much dramatization.

On the second section of the DVD we get Legong redux. The music on this second look at the film is a closer approach to traditional Balinese music, replacing the 1935 synchronized score done by a B-movie musical director. However the new soundtrack is still a combination of Balinese gamelan and Western instrumentation, performed by the Gamelan Sekar Jaya ensemble and the Club Foot Orchestra. The extra feature on the DVD showing Richard Marriot and I Made Subandi talking about their intentions in creating this fusion will be of special interest to musicologists.

Gods of Bali is a totally different style of film. It was made by Robert Snyder, who had just won an Oscar for The Titan, his 1950 documentary on Michelangelo. Jaap Kunst, the great Dutch expert on Indonesian music, arranged the score. It was released in 1952, so it must have been shot just as the Balinese were recovering from a grueling decade that saw both Japanese occupation and their war of independence. The film was shot in black and white, which reinforces the drabness of that moment. Balinese ritual really needs color. The narration is heavily didactic: a mid-Atlantic accent explains everything from a local viewpoint: "we Balinese believe..." There is no storyline, but as in Legong we are introduced to a range of Balinese religious performances. Not surprisingly there is much overlap between the two films. Both show the same dances and cremation ceremonies.

Despite the dated documentary feel of Gods of Bali, especially the stilted narration, it holds up well as an ethnographic document, and even the narration is generally accurate and informative.

Alas, that cannot be said about the last film on this DVD, Kliou (The Killer; 1937). Like Legong, Kliou was produced by Constance Bennett, directed by de la...