Beau Geste

I first saw Beau Geste twenty years ago at the Biograph in New York City, a revival house that was doing a series on the films of 1939, which is generally regarded as the greatest year in Hollywood history (there are very few revival houses left in New York anymore--they've been pretty much done in by the proliferation of classic films on DVD). At the time I thought it was a grand adventure, and my opinion hasn't changed any by seeing it on the small screen yesterday.

Based on a novel by P.C. Wren, the film opens in North Africa. A company of French Foreign Legion arrives at a fort to find that all the occupants are dead. Eerily, the corpses are arranged at the turrets, propped up holding guns. One dead body contains a letter confessing to the theft of a valuable sapphire. Soon afterward, the place mysteriously goes up in flames. It's a great opener.

We then flashback to the three Geste brothers. They are adventure-loving orphans who have been taken in by a kind-hearted English aristocrat. The boys will end up being played by Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, and Ray Milland (and young Beau is played by the juvenile Donald O'Connor). Money becomes tight, though, and it looks like the family's most valuable possession, a large sapphire called the Blue Water, will have to be sold. But then it is stolen, and the brothers, each claiming responsibility for the theft, run off and join the Foreign Legion.

The Foreign Legion was ripe territory for adventure writers, because they took men from all nations and asked no questions, so it was an ideal haven for criminals on the lam. The Geste brothers run into all sorts of characters, including a cowboy (Broderick Crawford), a sniveling Russian thief (J. Carroll Naish), and a sadistic sergeant (Brian Donlevy, who was Oscar-nominated). While they are stationed in the remote Fort Zinderneuf, the commanding officer dies and Donlevy takes over, leading to a mutiny.

While watching this film it struck me how times have changed. If this movie were remade today (it was originally a silent film in 1926, and then was remade in 1966) it would cost a hundred million dollars and would have a cast of thousands (or be heavily CGIed). The 1939 film is done on a very modest scale--there are few sets, and the desert locations were shot in Yuma, Arizona. Cooper and Preston don't even attempt English accents, and there is no mention of the politics involved. Instead of scene of epic battles, the film suggests sweep, and has such a delicate touch that one doesn't miss the excesses of today. Nothing can top the simple shot near the end of Robert Preston, standing on a sand dune, blowing charge on his bugle, waving his comrades on.

This film was directed by William A. Wellman, and this post kicks off a retrospective I'll be doing of his work. He was a director, like Howard Hawks and Michael Curtiz, who was directly opposite the auteur theory--a craftsman who made all sorts of films, many of them famous, but has faded largely into obscurity today. As I go along I'll be sharing what I learn about Wellman.