Brisk and polished in the best 30s Paramount manner, this mounting of Rudyard Kipling’s first novel is limited mainly by its Classics Illustrated impulse to synopsize the story even as it preserves extended chunks of literary dialogue. As an English painter and former colonial soldier in the Sudan who’s losing his eyesight, Ronald Colman is so stiffly decorous that he sometimes seems to have been painted onto William Wellman’s artfully composed frames. Ida Lupino, as Colman’s brash cockney model, and Walter Huston, as his faithful friend, are particular standouts; Robert Carson scripted this 1939 feature. 97 min. (JR)