If memory serves, the Tarzan of Edgar Rice Burroughs novel was actually
a verbose, coherent lord stranded in the jungle. He spoke well and
was actually a regal gentleman. But that image was forever shattered
once Johnny Weissmuller donned a loin cloth, unleashed his trademark
yodeling cry, and began swinging through the jungle. In the same way
that Bela Lugosi owns the image of Dracula for most people and it’s
almost inconceivable to think of anyone but Boris Karloff when considering
Frankenstein’s monster, it is former Olympic swimmer Johnny
Weissmuller that most of us, even those of us who have never actually
seen the movie, think of when we think of Tarzan.
And it’s with good reason. Weissmuller gives an iconic and
rather sturdy performance here as a man of the jungle who speaks no
known language (he seems to have concocted some speech of his own
with no supervision that, I guess, the apes understand somehow) and
isn’t pinned down by any of the civilized, moralistic trappings
of the modern world (at least, the modern world as it was in 1932).
He may not be what Burroughs envisioned but, frankly, Burroughs take
on this white man of the jungle seems pretty boring once you’ve
seen what Weissmuller can do with the character. He completely convinces
us a simple man with jungle smarts and he especially convinces us
that he could fall in love with the first white woman he has ever
seen: Jane, as played by the beautiful Maureen O’ Sullivan.
Maureen’s performance is also fascinating. From the moment
she first sees Tarzan, and is abducted by him shortly thereafter,
we get the sense that she wants to jump his poor, uneducated jungle
bones. There’s a near rape, some erotic playfulness by the local
watering hole, and even some implied jungle sex! Fading to black when
Tarzan is taking Jane in his arms back to a tree is the same as playing
some obnoxious saxophone music. We get the idea, and what an idea!
Maureen and Johnny have such erotic, intense chemistry that the mere
notion of the sex that happened off-screen is more arousing than the
marathons of sex you see in the average night of Cinemax viewing.
I have no doubt this is one of those films that helped usher in the
dreaded Hays Code of the 30’s, the bureau that monitored and
policed all films to keep the average filmgoer safe from the mere
implication of sex. There is some heavy stuff going on here. Not that
Maureen’s performance is great only for her wanton jungle boy
lust, no. It’s also noteworthy because of how her character
develops. It would be hard for any actress to convince us that her
character has gone from shrieking at everything in the jungle to wanting
to stay and make a life with a jungle man she barely knows (but that
she definitely knows pretty well pretty quickly, wink wink) but somehow
Maureen O’Sullivan has us thoroughly convinced of it. She does
it so effortlessly that you barely notice the skill with which she
has accomplished this turn around.
Maureen and Johnny’s performances are so good, in fact, that
you gloss over a lot of the film’s rough spots. The movie’s
exposition is fairly dull and doesn’t move very well. Until
the party of intrepid explorers begins to be attacked by hippos and
crocodiles, you may be on the verge of going to sleep. Once Tarzan
shows up to seduce Jane and start wrestling any animal to cross his
path, however, the film kicks it into overdrive and scarcely stops
for breath. Most of these action sequences involve fake animals and
stock footage, but somehow that adds to their charm. Maybe I’m
just really tired of CGI, I don’t know. There is a breathless
level of excitement to this film which is all the more amazing since
there isn’t a note of musical score in the picture. The producers
were either too cheap to spring for one, or they trusted their material
enough to keep the audience hooked and riveted without a musical score
cueing them on how to feel about it. I must say that I barely noticed
the lack of a score and, besides, most old movies had an overabundance
of music anyway. I’ve seen a lot of old movies use background
music almost constantly, and that can get really annoying really fast.
The movie doesn’t bother to tell us the whys and hows that have
brought Tarzan to the jungle, but that’s also not a big deal.
After all, Tarzan can’t speak English and none of the other
people onscreen know how he got there, so how the hell are we supposed
to find out?
Another major stumbling block of viewing this picture in modern times
is the slightly racist overtones of it. The black people in the film
are all viewed as soulless savages at worst or bumbling slaves at
best. There is more than one moment where the leaders of the expedition
are whipping their servants to get them to go where they want them.
This is hardly enlightened cinema. The filmmakers also seem to kill
the Africans off without thinking twice about it. (At least the Africans
are played by actual Africans rather than an obvious white guy with
black makeup on. I’ve seen some silent films where such was
not the case.) Whenever danger is near, you can be sure that one of
the guides or servants will die in order to prove how dangerous the
circumstances are. Oh, and the reason that all these people are going
into the jungle? To find a mystical elephant’s graveyard and
make a fortune from ivory, how’s that for politically correctness?
Yet, it’s rather fascinating (strangely) to consider that there
was a time when views like this were no problem for the moviegoing
public to swallow, that they were accepted, normal values. It’s
like discovering a time capsule buried in 1932.
Simply put, viewed over 70 years later and accepted on its own terms,
“Tarzan: The Ape Man” is a fascinating, strangely erotic
adventure spectacle that thoroughly entertains. It’s far from
perfect, and it’s got some rather glaring problems, but it’s
got a charm and a relentless desire to entertain that so many modern
films so sorely lack.
