Kipling's India

Teaching Film Custodians classroom film of excerpts from the 1950 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film, "Kim", based on the Rudyard Kipling novel. This film visualizes the people, places and customs of nineteenth century India, which provided the basis and background of Kipling's verses and stories. An English orphan, Kim, whose father had been a British soldier stationed in India, disguises himself as a native boy to escape school. He joins forces with a saintly old Buddhist lama who is seeking a mythical sacred river. They travel the Grand Trunk Road across India together, witnessing the colorful life of the country. Ultimately Kim's identity is discovered by a British Army chaplain. The lama and the chaplain collaborate to provide for the boy's education in an English school., As an excerpt from Kim, this film pictures the wanderings of a boy, Kim, and his holy one, until they find the regiment of Kim's father. Kim joins company with a Lama who is looking for the River of the Arrow in order to wash away his sins. The boy begs for both of them en route, finds his father's regiment, but is apprehended for trespassing. He succeeds in proving to his father that he is his son, and with the Lama's assistance, gains admission to the school for regimental orphans.