On the duration of a shot within a classically cut scene:

Two of the longer [shots] in the first battle scene involve Gunga Din. Din first appears half way into the action as he bends over a fallen Indian soldier. Din smiles to comfort the man, taking his water pouch from his back and giving the soldier water.

The [editor] stays with this image longer than with any previous shot in the battle scene. Two things are accomplished by this temporal elongation. First, the editor highlights the compassion of Din. Second, the editor builds tension by putting Din in peril as he lingers over someone who will not live. The editor lavishes time on Din again towards the end of the battle scene, when he crouches down next to MacChesney, who derides Din's desire to fight. In this second lengthy shot, Din's thwarted ambition becomes obvious.

[after Cheryl Murphy]

On physical comedy, colonialism, post-colonialism, and Gunga Din

As I ponder an eerie resemblance between the relationship of the English and the Indians and of [contemporary] Americans and Iraq and Afghanistan, [I sense that] if a similar feature were produced today with American soldiers and Iraqis it would be considered absolutely outrageous. Yet I am bothered by the idea that such reaction may be only superficial, as we possibly have not yet individually come to a full understanding or acceptance of other cultures, their beliefs, mannerisms and faith. I wonder if we have replaced an insensitive yet spontaneous comic stereotype with a combination of fear and disguised aversion to nonwestern cultures. [If] the bloodless and apparently harmless war scenes in Gunga Din were replaced with the realism of death and destruction, on second thought I [would] wonder if we are [genuinely] a more mature audience in 2006, [or, on the contrary, merely] numbed and paralyzed in a strange combination of conformity and fear.

Mariana Barutti