East of Elephant Rock (1977)

East of Elephant Rock is a 1977 British independent drama film directed by Don Boyd and starring John Hurt, Jeremy Kemp and Judi Bowker. It was Boyd's second feature film following his little-noticed 1975 Intimate Reflections. Like William Somerset Maugham's 1927 play The Letter and two subsequent film adaptations, its narrative content depended on the 1911 Ethel Proudlock murder in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which became a cause célèbre scandalising British colonial society and which had been featured in a Sunday Observer article as recently as the year before. Boyd, drawing in part on his own experience of growing up in an increasingly dysfunctional family in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion, wanted to tell a story about the decline of the Empire and the surrender of responsibility. In the event his project was for the most part ridiculed but the film did draw warm support from the film director Bryan Forbes.



^ "East of Elephant Rock". BFI database. Retrieved 21 March 2011.

^ "East of Elephant Rock". IMBd. Retrieved 21 March 2011.

^ Lawlor, Eric (March 2000). Murder on the Verandah: Love and Betrayal in British Malaysia. Flamingo. ISBN 0-00-655065-7.

^ Chung Chee Min. "The Proudlock Saga". The Victoria Institution Web Page. Retrieved 21 March 2011.

^ "Storyville:Donald and Luba - A Family Movie". BFI database. Retrieved 21 March 2011.

^ Walker, Alexander (September 2005) [1985]. National Heroes: British Cinema in the 70's and 80's. Orion. pp. 147–150. ISBN 0-7528-5707-X.

Synopsis

The film is set in South East Asia in 1948 in an unnamed British colony. Embassy secretary Nash is having an affair with a native woman. He takes as mistress the wife of a plantation owner with fateful (and fatal) consequences.

Actors