"Certainly one of the wildest, most original, and most instinctive movie stars turned auteurs in the Hollywood annals, Cornel Wilde made procedurals of uncivilized survival, in a visual syntax that ranged from comic-strip splat to outright gut punch." Poor Cornel Wilde, to have to carry that burden of ripe writing.
Wilde was a limited actor who managed to make it to the big-time in the mid-Forties, only to see his status as a star slip down the ladder starting at the end of the Forties. He always wanted to direct, so he took what remained of his bankability and parlayed it into a handful of movies he produced and directed in the Fifties and Sixties. It turned out, in my view, that he was just as sincere a director as he was straightforward and without guile as an actor. He brought a kind of naive directness to his films (and without the awful French accent he sometimes employed in an acting role). As a director, he knew what he wanted, but he had very limited financing to get the job done, Says the same overwrought film critic quoted above, "Wilde remains an unexhumed artist, a scattershot brother to delirious genre god Samuel Fuller..." I can only say, "Oh, brother!"
The Naked Prey is a simple story that takes place in colonial South Africa. Wilde, identified in the credits only as Man, has been hired to lead a small safari on the hunt for elephant ivory. Along the way the man who is paying for the safari manages to offend a group of warriors they encounter. Wilde tries to intervene, but to no effect. Not much later the safari is attacked. The white men are captured and brought to the native camp. All the captives are killed in ingenious and humiliating ways, which the men, women and children of the tribe think is hilarious. Wilde, however, is recognized as the man who attempted to give the warriors their due. So he is condemned to an honorable death. He will be set free, naked and without weapons, and at a specified point a group of warriors will chase after him. They will kill him when they capture him. It will be death, but a brave death. The Naked Prey is the story of the chase, told without English dialogue or subtitles. Wilde the director cuts away frequently from the chase to show us pictures of the struggle for life in Africa, everything from big cats chasing baboons to baboons chasing big cats, to toads eating other toads, to scorpions getting ready for a face-off, to a lizard and a snake in combat, to a disemboweled elephant being butchered for food, to a snake biting a man and a man eating a snake, to slave traders attacking a peaceful village.
Wilde does not give his character any nobility, and he makes no effort to portray Man's pursuers as either noble or simplistic. We've seen that Man is a decent fellow and he remains one. In his exhausting struggle to keep ahead of the warriors, he is able to kill a few. This gives him no pleasure, nor does it give us pleasure. The fact of the matter, Wilde shows us, is that the pursued and the pursuing are equally decent men.
The man also is not particularly ingenious or brave. He is simply desperate, but he also is knowledgeable and experienced. The message Wilde gives us, I think, is that life is struggle, and that man's struggles are not so far removed from all other creature's struggles. This is a message of no great depth, even for 1967, but it's presented in an exciting and well- constructed package.
Wilde seems to be in the process of becoming the latest darling of the auteur-loving film crowd, energized in part by the recent Criterion release of The Naked Prey. He became an interesting man as he managed to move to directing. He doesn't deserve the quivering attention of those who love to role around in the mouth the word "auteur."
Wilde was a limited actor who managed to make it to the big-time in the mid-Forties, only to see his status as a star slip down the ladder starting at the end of the Forties. He always wanted to direct, so he took what remained of his bankability and parlayed it into a handful of movies he produced and directed in the Fifties and Sixties. It turned out, in my view, that he was just as sincere a director as he was straightforward and without guile as an actor. He brought a kind of naive directness to his films (and without the awful French accent he sometimes employed in an acting role). As a director, he knew what he wanted, but he had very limited financing to get the job done, Says the same overwrought film critic quoted above, "Wilde remains an unexhumed artist, a scattershot brother to delirious genre god Samuel Fuller..." I can only say, "Oh, brother!"
The Naked Prey is a simple story that takes place in colonial South Africa. Wilde, identified in the credits only as Man, has been hired to lead a small safari on the hunt for elephant ivory. Along the way the man who is paying for the safari manages to offend a group of warriors they encounter. Wilde tries to intervene, but to no effect. Not much later the safari is attacked. The white men are captured and brought to the native camp. All the captives are killed in ingenious and humiliating ways, which the men, women and children of the tribe think is hilarious. Wilde, however, is recognized as the man who attempted to give the warriors their due. So he is condemned to an honorable death. He will be set free, naked and without weapons, and at a specified point a group of warriors will chase after him. They will kill him when they capture him. It will be death, but a brave death. The Naked Prey is the story of the chase, told without English dialogue or subtitles. Wilde the director cuts away frequently from the chase to show us pictures of the struggle for life in Africa, everything from big cats chasing baboons to baboons chasing big cats, to toads eating other toads, to scorpions getting ready for a face-off, to a lizard and a snake in combat, to a disemboweled elephant being butchered for food, to a snake biting a man and a man eating a snake, to slave traders attacking a peaceful village.
Wilde does not give his character any nobility, and he makes no effort to portray Man's pursuers as either noble or simplistic. We've seen that Man is a decent fellow and he remains one. In his exhausting struggle to keep ahead of the warriors, he is able to kill a few. This gives him no pleasure, nor does it give us pleasure. The fact of the matter, Wilde shows us, is that the pursued and the pursuing are equally decent men.
The man also is not particularly ingenious or brave. He is simply desperate, but he also is knowledgeable and experienced. The message Wilde gives us, I think, is that life is struggle, and that man's struggles are not so far removed from all other creature's struggles. This is a message of no great depth, even for 1967, but it's presented in an exciting and well- constructed package.
Wilde seems to be in the process of becoming the latest darling of the auteur-loving film crowd, energized in part by the recent Criterion release of The Naked Prey. He became an interesting man as he managed to move to directing. He doesn't deserve the quivering attention of those who love to role around in the mouth the word "auteur."