Movie Thoughts: Call of the Wild (1935)

• Released: 9 August 1935
• Directed by: William A. Wellman
• Running time: 1 h 35 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A prospector bonds with a dog he buys during the Klondike Gold Rush, and ends up falling for a married woman along the way.

My Thoughts

I liked this much more upon re-watching it. I could this time follow the story much more and was way more invested in the characters.

Okay, so an accurate adaptation of the novel this is not. The focus is shifted onto Thornton, who has been renamed Jack during this adaptation. Buck is certainly a present factor in the story, but this isn't really his movie. The stars are Thornton (Clark Gable) and the made-up-for-the-movie character of Claire Blake (Loretta Young).

It mostly focuses on their blooming romance as they traverse the Arctic north looking for a lost mine. Like I've stated in previous reviews, I don't much care for romance movies, but for whatever reason I thought there was a real tenderness to this relationship, and I surprisingly didn't mind it taking over the movie and Buck's point of view.

The relationship between Thornton and his sidekick "Shorty" was also quite fun. One complaint of mine, though, is that these relationships make the one between Thornton and Buck, what this movie should've been about in the first place, take a backseat.

The acting was fine, I really liked the nature and the dog did a good performance as well. There were some scenes that may have been questionable form an animal abuse point of view, but it's nowhere near as bad as it could've been, especially for movies back when.

Some of the plot points of the novel surrounding Buck do shine through (him pulling the 1000 pounds sled and returning to the wild), but he doesn't feel like the star of this movie. I'm kind of okay with this shift as mentioned before, but it would've been nice for it to be at least a bit more true to the book, even without Buck as main character.

There are some concerning accusations surrounding the main two actors of this movie, but as far as I know nothing has quite been proven.

Some other downsides are the film ending with a racist gag and of course there being some sexism towards Claire. But the rest was good enough to warrant a three and a half stars.