''The Tiger of Eschnapur'', or in original German, ''Der Tiger von Eschnapur'', is a 1959 West German-French-Italian adventure film directed by

Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...

. It is the first of two films comprising what has come to be known as ''Fritz Lang's Indian Epic''; the other is ''The Indian Tomb'' ''( Das Indische Grabmal'').

returned to Germany to direct these films, which together tell the story of a German architect, the Indian

maharaja Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king". A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, a ...

for whom he is supposed to build schools and hospitals, and the

Eurasian Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Ja ...

dancer who comes between them.

Prior works

Lang's Indian epic is based on work he did forty years earlier on a silent version of ''Das Indische Grabmal''. He and

Thea von Harbou Thea Gabriele von Harbou (27 December 1888 – 1 July 1954) was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic ''Metropolis'' (1927) and for the 19 ...

co-wrote the screenplay, basing it on von Harbou's novel of the same name. Lang was set to direct, but that job was taken from him and given to

Joe May Joe May (born Joseph Otto Mandl; 7 November 1880 – 29 April 1954) was an Austrian film director and film producer and one of the pioneers of German cinema. Biography After studying in Berlin and a variety of odd jobs, he began his career as ...

. Lang did not control the final form of that earlier version which was a commercial and critical failure at the time, although its reputation has grown in recent years. Released in 1921, the original version of ''Das Indische Grabmal'' had a running time of 3 hours and was released in two parts. For the remake, Lang also divided the story into two parts that each run about 100 minutes, a length modern audiences can more easily accept.

Plot

Architect Harold Berger arrives in India and travels to the kingdom ruled by Maharajah Chandra, for whom he will be building schools and hospitals. En route to the Maharajah's palace, Berger travels with a temple dancer named Seetha, who has also been invited to the palace. En route, he saves her life when her caravan is attacked by a

man-eating tiger Tiger attacks are an extreme form of human–wildlife conflict which occur for various reasons and have claimed more human lives than attacks by any of the other big cats. The most comprehensive study of deaths due to tiger attacks estimates that ...

. Seetha, whose father was European, has inadvertently caused the Maharajah to become infatuated while he watched her dancing at a religious ceremony. She and the architect, however, have secretly begun to fall in love. This leads to tension between Chandra and Berger, further exacerbated by scheming courtiers, including the Maharaja's older brother. They believe that Chandra's potential marriage to the dancer could become a pretext for toppling his reign. Seetha and Berger escape together into the desert, just before Berger's sister and her husband, an architect who works with Berger, arrive in Eschnapur. Chandra informs them that he now wants a tomb to be built before any further work can begin on the previously commissioned schools and hospitals. After discovering that Berger and Seetha have escaped, Chandra issues a command for Berger to be killed, and Seetha returned alive for burial in the tomb after its completion. The film ends with the couple stranded in the desert after their horses expire, just as a

sandstorm A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transpo ...

begins. (The story continues in the sequel film, ''The Indian Tomb'')

Cast

* Debra Paget as Seetha *

Paul Hubschmid Paul Hubschmid (; 20 July 1917 – 31 December 2001) was a Swiss actor. He was most notable for his role as Henry Higgins in a production of ''My Fair Lady''. In some of his Hollywood films he used the name Paul Christian. He appeared in dozens ...

as Harold Berger * Walter Reyer as Chandra *

Claus Holm Claus Holm (4 August 1918 – 21 September 1996) was a German film actor. He appeared in 50 films between 1943 and 1979. He was born in Bochum, Germany and died in Berlin, Germany. Selected filmography * ''Floh im Ohr'' (1943) - Knecht Ha ...

as Dr. Walter Rhode *

Luciana Paluzzi Luciana Paluzzi (born 10 June 1937) is an Italian actress. She is perhaps best known for playing SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, '' Thunderball'', but she had important roles in notable films of the 1960s and 1970s in ...

as Baharani *

Valéry Inkijinoff Valery Ivanovich Inkizhinov (russian: Валерий Иванович Инкижинов; 25 March 1895 – 26 September 1973), known as Valéry Inkijinoff, was a Russian actor, director and acting teacher. Born to a Buryat family in Irkutsk, ...

as Yama * Sabine Bethmann as Irene Rhode *

René Deltgen Renatus Heinrich Deltgen born 30 April 1909 in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg; died 29 January 1979 in Cologne, West Germany) was a Luxembourgian stage and film actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance ...

as Prince Ramigani * Jochen Brockmann as Padhu *

Richard Lauffen Richard Lauffen (June 2, 1907 – August 28, 1990) was a German actor. Filmography References External links * 1907 births 1990 deaths German male film actors People from Mönchengladbach 20th-century German male actors {{German ...

as Browana * Jochen Blume as Asagara * Helmut Hildebrand as Ramigani's servant *

Guido Celano Guido Celano (19 April 1904 – 7 March 1988) was an Italian actor, voice actor and film director. He appeared in 120 films between 1931 and 1988. He also directed two Spaghetti Westerns: '' Cold Killer'' and '' Gun Shy Piluk''. He was born ...

as General Dagh (uncredited) *

Victor Francen Victor Francen (born Victor Franssens, 5 August 1888 – 18 November 1977) was a Belgian-born actor with a long career in French cinema and in Hollywood. Biography Francen was born in 1888 in Tienen, the son of a chief of police. According ...

as Penitent (uncredited) *

Panos Papadopoulos Panos Papadopoulos (born 1958 in Kertezi, Greece) is the founder, designer and entrepreneur behind Panos Emporio AB, established 1986 in Gothenburg, Sweden, the largest swimwear supplier in Scandinavia. He is known as the "King of Swimwear". He is ...

as Courier (uncredited) * Angela Portaluri as Peasant woman (uncredited)

Production

The film was shot on location in India with a predominantly German cast. Lang was able to get permission from the

Maharana Maharana is a variation on the Indian royal title Rana (title), Rana. Maharana denotes 'king of kings', similar to the word "Maharaja". Ruler title in British India Salute states (all in present India) The gun salutes enjoyed by the states that ...

Udaipur Udaipur () ( ISO 15919: ''Udayapura''), historically named as Udayapura, is a city and municipal corporation in Udaipur district of the state of Rajasthan, India. It is the administrative headquarter of Udaipur district. It is the historic cap ...

to shoot at many locations that were normally barred to Western film crews. One of these was the floating

Lake Palace Lake Palace (formally known as Jag Niwas) is a former summer palace of the royal dynasty of Mewar, it is now turned into a hotel. The Lake Palace is located on the island of Jag Niwas in Lake Pichola, Udaipur, India, and its natural foundation s ...

seen much later in ''

Octopussy ''Octopussy'' is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by John Glen and the screenplay was written by G ...

''.DVD Savant Review: The Tiger of Eschnapur & The Indian Tomb
/ref> Interiors were shot at the

Spandau Studios The Spandau Studios or CCC Studios were film and television studios located in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin. They were established in 1949 following the Second World War by the producer Artur Brauner controller of CCC Films, on the site of a form ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

with sets designed by the art directors

Helmut Nentwig Helmut Nentwig (1916–2007) was a German art director.Bergfelder p.254 Selected filmography * ''You Can No Longer Remain Silent'' (1955) * ''Bonjour Kathrin (film), Bonjour Kathrin'' (1956) * ''The Simple Girl'' (1957) * ''The Big Chance (1957 ...

and

Willy Schatz Willy Schatz (1903–1976) was a German art director of Baltic German origin. He designed the sets for numerous film productions in post-war West Germany including Fritz Lang's '' The Tiger of Eschnapur'' and '' The Indian Tomb'' in 1959.Langford p ...

Releases

The two films were edited down into one 95-minute feature courtesy of

American International Pictures American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...

and released in the US in 1959 as ''Journey to the Lost City''—with Seetha's dance scenes heavily trimmed, courtesy of the

Hays Office The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the ...

. The negatives of Fritz Lang's original films were thought to be lost, but a set was rediscovered. Fantoma Films restored them in the DVD format, producing one disc for each film. The discs contain both German and English dialogue tracks, plus other extras. They were released by Image Entertainment in 2001.

Trivia

* Another film titled '' Der Tiger von Eschnapur'' was released in Germany in 1938. It too was based on Thea von Harbou's novel ''Das Indische Grabmal'' (''The Indian Tomb''). The film was directed by

Richard Eichberg Richard Eichberg (27 October 1888 – 8 May 1952) was a German film director and producer. He directed 87 films between 1915 and 1949. He also produced 77 films between 1915 and 1950. He was born in Berlin, Germany and died in Munich, Germ ...

and written by him along with Hans Klaehr and Arthur Pohl.

References

External links

* *
"Come On, Baby, Be My Tiger" - article about the several versions of the film

Artur-Brauner-Archive at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt (German), containing the production files for this movie
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tiger Of Eschnapur, The (1959 film) 1959 films 1959 adventure films 1959 romantic drama films German adventure films West German films French drama films Italian drama films 1950s German-language films Films based on German novels Films based on works by Thea von Harbou Films directed by Fritz Lang Films scored by Michel Michelet Films set in India Films with screenplays by Fritz Lang Remakes of German films Films shot at Spandau Studios Films shot in India Films shot in Rajasthan 1950s Italian films 1950s French films 1950s German films