Wee Willie Winkie

It's 1897. Widower Joyce Williams and her young daughter Priscilla (Shirley Temple) arrive in northern India to live with her hard-nosed and distant father-in-law Colonel Williams. They are met by Sergeant Donald MacDuff at the train station where rebel leader Khoda Khan is captured with a load of guns. MacDuff gives Priscilla the nickname private Winkie. The pairing of Shirley Temple and director John Ford may seem oddly ill-fitting. In a way, America's darling and America's western director have their sincerity in common. They are both Hollywood professionals. While Shirley Temple does her comedic cuteness, Ford surrounds it with something slightly gritty. It's still an odd mixture but it's a fascinating mixture. It has Temple's supreme childlike optimism while maintaining shades of reality. Quite frankly, this could be her best 'film'.

Showcase for Shirley Temple, produced on a much grander scale than most of her vehicles, has the feisty youngster and her newly-widowed mother traveling to war-torn North India in the late 1800s to live with Shirley's estranged paternal grandfather, a colonel stationed with the British Army. Loosely adapted from a Rudyard Kipling story, with some exciting set-ups and sequences at the outset; but, sadly, the picture runs out of intriguing ideas before the finale. Director John Ford seems to lose track of the supporting characters in an attempt to resurrect the typical Shirley Temple scenario, although Cesar Romero is well-cast and memorable as Khoda Khan. Handsome, to be certain, but not one of the diminutive star's better efforts. ** from ****

This was okay but Shirley Temple made enough better movies that this wasn't a "keeper"in the end. I still have at least a half dozen of her other films which, I thought, were far more appealing. They were also shorter, too. At 100 minutes, this is too long a movie for the normal Temple fare. It was her longest movie as a child actor. The major fault, which also involves the time, is that is simply wasn't that interesting. It has its cute moments as all Temple films did and the cinematography was good. The fact John Ford directed it may have something to do with the better-than-average photography. I also enjoyed Victor McLaughlen in here. He played the best character.