tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post7547767410102338692..comments2024-03-14T19:14:03.059-05:00Comments on Acidemic - Film: The Blossoming of Judy Jones: FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE (1934)Erich Kuerstenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30487573.post-44688565434893916582011-08-01T15:55:09.474-05:002011-08-01T15:55:09.474-05:00Erich, another great review. Four Frightened Peop...Erich, another great review. Four Frightened People is another movie I was briefly obsessed with -- I've read (and posted to the "trivia" section for the film on imdb) that the movie was originally 96 minutes long; this version was shown only once, at a screening in California in December, 1933. The screening audience was mostly made up of kids, who didn't much like "Four Frightened People." DeMille however decided the kids were right; he felt that the movie was too long by ten minutes, and that further character-set up was necessary. To accommodate this DeMille added in the opening blurb that the movie was filmed on real locations and he included brief bios for each of the four frightened people. DeMille then screened the movie and deemed the test audience was correct, and cut a "thousand feet" from the film, resulting in the 17 minutes cut from the test version. So then, the 96-minute "longer" cut was never actually shown to a mass audience; the only certain thing about it was that it included sequences with Ethel Griffies, who played the mother of Arnold Ainger (Herbert Marshall).<br /><br />My wife, who is Malaysian Chinese, has told me that the "natives" are actually speaking Malay in the film. She's also confirmed that Mary Boland is also truly speaking Malay when she talks to the natives -- however my wife says that Boland's accent makes her Malay nearly impenetrable.<br /><br />Colbert is obviously topless in her close-ups during the waterfall bath scene; she claimed later in life that she was wearing a top. Who knows, maybe she became modest as the years progressed. The film proves this untrue however. And that's not Colbert in the longshots; I read somewhere who exactly that was appearing nude as Colbert in those longshots, but I can't remember -- I seem to recall it was one of DeMille's assistants or something.<br /><br />I've always thought it was a stroke of luck that "Judy Jones" and Marshall's character left Malaysia after all -- it wasn't long before the Japanese took the area over. My wife's father has many horror stories about the Japanese occupation of Malaysia.<br /><br />Colbert by the way returned filmically to Malaysia a few decades later, in the UK-produced "Outpost in Malaya" from 1953. This is the only film where you can see her fire heavy machine guns, toss grenades, fire pistols, drive armored vehicles, and even kill someone!Joe Kenneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03285576322579808153noreply@blogger.com