In India, an elephant boy (Sabu) wants to become a great man like his father and helps a British colonial conservationist (Walter Hudd) find and herd elephants.

A film project that began with producer Alexander Korda sending the great documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty to the Mysore region of India to film for an Empire project. The result was 55 hours of geographic documentary footage, but no discernible narrative. Zoltan Korda took over, brought the production back to England and filmed a narrative around Rudyard Kipling's story, 'Toomei of the Elephants'. Much of Flaherty's footage is used in the film, but incongruously also sits beside some poor obvious fake elephant feet as in the 'Dance of the elephants' sequence. Nevertheless, both as a docudrama and a narrative film it comes off surprisingly well. One of Flaherty's other contributions was the discovery of Sabu who became a star after this film.

It is quite clear from the beginning that we have to be understanding about Sabu's acting ability in this his first film.He undertakes the opening narration in a very stilted form.It is quite apparent that he is reading off of boards placed behind the camera.The scenes in India are very well photographed in black and white and the music is quite captivating.the dramatic scenes though are often rather awkward.Not just because of Sabu.the scenes of him with the white trappers are very redolent of the Empire,upon whom the sun never set.Korda did rather have an obsession about this.Bearing in mind that he had previously made Sanders of The River and was about to embark upon "The Drum" and of course "The Four Feathers".Sabu would shortly become a much more skilled performer.