WHAT MYSTERIOUS POWER MOVES HERE?DEAD MEN STAND TO ARMS!A LIVING BUGLER VANISHES!THE FALLEN ARE SPIRITED AWAY!THEN - - A FORTRESS DISAPPEARS IN FIRE!These happenings - - strange and terrible - - are but a part of the story of three brothers, whose love for each other proved stronger than their fear of death.If it wasn't abundantly clear from the preceding pull quotes, Beau Geste is an old-fashioned, romanticized French Foreign Legion adventure; the type of tale where a comically large sapphire prompts acts of chivalry and Arabs exist solely as plot-advancing adversaries. But it's also a grand visual spectacle where men on horseback, resembling a disturbed mound of fire ants, teem across the North African sand (or, more accurately, an Arizonan approximation thereof), and the secrets of an eerie, corpse-staffed fort are revealed through a clever bookend structure. Above all, it's a celebration of a bond between brothers, uninhibited about showing physical affection, whether under playful or grave conditions. Love can manifest itself in many ways. Even as a Viking’s funeral - dog and all - in the desert. I've wanted to check out this first cinematic adaptation of P. C. Wren's 1924 novel, helmed by Herbert Brenon, for roughly 19 years now, ever since watching William Wellman's 1939 version as part of a Gary Cooper DVD collection. So when I stumbled across a surprisingly crisp copy on YouTube the other day (every internet rip I'd previously encountered rendered the actors into nearly unrecognizable blurs), I jumped at my chance. Even having read Wellman’s picture categorized as "a virtual scene-for-scene remake", somehow I wasn't prepared for just how closely the films align. If you’ve seen the '39 flick, sitting through this one will feel like a case of deja view.* (Apart from the whole silent thing, of course; interestingly, one difference I did note was the later movie’s decision to change the names of its villains from "Lejaune" and "Boldini" to "Markoff" and "Rasinoff". Interpret that how you will.) Another commonality between the two films is their amazingly stacked casts, in this case, including, but not limited to: embryonic forms of Neil Hamilton and Ralph Forbes, Noah Beery in sadistic bastard mode (come to think of it, did he have any other mode?), pretty young thing Mary Brian (who, like Susan Hayward in the remake, has nothing to do), William Powell paying his pre-stardom "cast me as slimeballs of every possible ethnicity/nationality" dues, and, of course, Ronald Colman, a few years shy of being able to share his velvety voice with the movie-going world, but damn well suited to looking dashing in legionnaire garb. "Nobody'll ever know how brave them soldiers was!"Lastly, as the world we currently inhabit shows no signs of slowing its hellish descent, here's a picture of Bill with a baby camel. Because you deserve it. 🐫*Full wordplay credit to the great noir1946 Postscript - I realize she's playing her character at two different ages, however, it's still weird to see Alice Joyce as Colman's aunt/mother figure, especially just a year after they'd been husband and wife in Stella Dallas. Also, over the course of 15 years, Aunt Pat aged thusly, while Beau, well . . . I guess he lived hard? Post-postscript - Speaking of the kiddos, in spite of my persistent allergy to children, I must concede that "We are now about to perform a naval surgery without esthetics" elicited a grin, even if all that unsupervised projectile/matches/knife playtime was agita-inducing.
