Armand Denis & Leila Roosevelet, “Wheels Across India”, “New England”
This black and white 1940 travelogue film produced and directed by Armand Denis and his wife Leila Roosevelt for the Chrysler Corporation documents their 1939 expedition to Burma (now Myanmar), depicting landmarks and customs with an air of exoticism (TRT 31:48).
Titles: “Dodge Division, Chrysler Corporation presents” over automobiles driving through rugged off-road terrain. “Wheels Across India” (0:10). Title card: “New England. Cows graze. A white colonial style home on a well-manicured estate (0:49). Children play in a nearby pond with a small, handmade, outrigger style boat fitted with a sail. Girls watch from a meadow pan to a pair of leopards (1:28). A group of Dodge T-series trucks loaded with rooftop cargo (2:32). A stenciled car door: “Denis-Roosevelt Asiatic Expedition” (2:42). Armand Denis directs workmen in closeup (2:58). Young boys play with leopards that wear collars and leashes. A girl feeds the cats raw meat (3:33). The Denis home exterior at night. The leopards recline by fireside (4:14). Mr. Denis produces a globe and charts the course of his travels before his gathered family (4:44). A map shows India, Nepal, Burma, Ceylon. A dotted line leads from Colombo to Rangoon (now Yangon) (5:13). Shwedagon Pagoda, aka the Great Dagon Pagoda, Great Dragon Pagoda, Golden Pagoda from afar and in closeup. Statues line the base of the gilded stupa (5:34). A seated buddha and a pair of chinthes or leogryphs (5:51). Immense bamboo water wheels turn in a riverbed, irrigating rice fields. Woven paddles and bamboo buckets empty water into gutters. A villager climbs and rides the wheel (6:16). Trucks drive into Bagan, passing stupas and temples, overgrown with foliage. Touring the ancient Buddhist structures (7:49). A temple to Nāga with a stone relief sculpture arching over the doorway (8:36). A panorama of the deserted city. Our hosts survey the landscape with a Buddhist priest (8:42). A Kayan Lahwi girl wearing neck-rings poses with Leila Roosevelt. Another Kayan woman has her neck rings removed with some assistance. Armand Denis looks on, smiling (9:13). The rings are raised over her head (10:46). Girls in westernized dress carry loads suspended from their heads, their necks unadorned (10:57). Dodge trucks cross a desert landscape with a mountain range in the background (11:20). Our hosts board three boats, each carrying many native rowers, who carry paddles with their legs. Two boats appear to race (12:36). One boat capsizes. Small boats come to the rescue (13:19). Rowers paddle toward the camera, balancing on one foot expertly (14:17). Our hosts sit aboard a bamboo raft as their guides in conical hats paddle them down a placid jungle river (15:05). The jungle expedition continues on foot (15:46). Natives chop away the trunk of a tree until it is felled. A team cleans the timber (16:08). A native rides an elephant. A log is chained to the elephant, who drags it. Another elephant pushes from behind (16:37). Elephants push logs into a riverbed (18:02). Baby elephant calves (19:46). Elephants bathe in the river (20:43). Elephants are loaded with crew and cargo (22:50). A caravan makes its way through thick jungle brush (23:24). Fording a river (23:50). Having arrived at their destination village, our hosts meet with “the priestesses of the snake.” An elderly woman smokes (25:32). A native woman grinds wood into a paste and applies it to her face (25:58). Oxcarts climb a mountain trail. The party continues on foot while a man sounds a gong (26:38). The priestess carries a symbolic offering of fruit to the mouth of a cave. She scatters rice as film cameras roll (27:29). She coaxes a poisonous cobra snake until it leaps out and rushes towards her in attack. Then, she leans over the erect snake and kisses it (28:13). Review of previous scenes. Dissolve to a spinning globe and end credits (30:38).
Armand Denis was a Belgian-born documentary and ethnographic filmmaker, best known as the host of British nature programs of the 1950’s and 60’s.
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