The Four Feathers

The popular A.E.W. Mason novel, the British version of The Red Badge Of Courage, got its third screen version from Paramount in 1929. Technology was winning a race with Paramount that year. Had The Four Feathers been done a bit later it would have included sound and we would have heard such folks in the cast as Richard Arlen, William Powell, Clive Brook, and Fay Wray make their talkie debuts. Sound Effects were added on however post production.

Richard Arlen is our protagonist Harry Fevasham in this version. He's been brought up in a military family and it and England expects every Fevasham to do his duty. But Harry even as a juvenile questions whether he has the right stuff. When his regiment is called to the Sudan he resigns his commission. Four of his fellow officers send him the anonymous white feather and brand him a coward. His fiancé turns from him, his family disowns him.

What to do but go to the Sudan and in your own way fight for the British Empire. Fevasham's adventures, incognito at first, make up the rest of the novel and this film.

This version can hardly be compared to the one that Alexander Korda made for the British cinema in 1939. It has the one unforgettable advantage of being filmed in the Sudan at the actual battle sites at Khartoum and Omdurman. This one has some nice location shooting in California's Imperial Valley and earnest performances from the cast.

Good thing this one was preserved. See how it stacks up against the many others filmed.

I am a HUGE Richard Arlen fan, so of course, did I ever love this one!!!! The filming is rather modern for that era and the emotion and action seem to be equally portrayed and well done by all. There doesn't seem to be the same kind of poetry and grand cinema "feel" in later movies, I am glad it was produced in this decade of film-making. I love Fay Wray, she is well-paired with Arlen. This story is one of personal discovery and courage despite great adversity and seemingly impossible odds. Richard Arlen comes to sound without one iota of hesitation* and does one of tha most memorable characters in his long career. Friendship, betrayal, redemption: Great stuff to put on the screen--fantastic story. *(This is one of the first pictures made after sound was available.) Exceptional Group of Classic Film Stars!! Hope I can find a copy for my Richard Arlen video collection.

This characteristically elaborate production from the people who later gave us 'King Kong' plainly took so long to make it was overtaken by the introduction of sound and wound up as Paramount's last silent feature, thus necessitating a Movietone soundtrack. No matter, it still gives Alexander Korda's definitive 1939 Technicolor super-production a run for its money as rip-roaring macho entertainment.

There are a number of plot differences between this version and its successors which I'll put down to it probably being closer to A.E.W.Mason's 1902 novel, but it still gets most of the best-remembered moments into a trim 81 minutes. Cameraman Robert Kurrle keeps it looking good throughout, while the spectacular location work (including extraordinary footage of monkeys and hippopotami plunging into a river) is all one would expect of the team who gave us 'Grass' and 'Chang', with rousing battle scenes against a spectacular desert backdrop that easily bear comparison with Korda's version.

George Fawcett is a forbidding Col. Feversham (sic), Fay Wray makes an appealing heroine, but like Clive Brook and Noah Beery Sr. (playing a slave trader) doesn't get much screen time, while William Powell as in most of his silent roles looks rather incongruous without a martini glass in his hand. Most of the weight of the film falls up on the broad shoulders of brilliantined Richard Arlen, who isn't terribly convincing as the scion of a long line of old military duffers, but is certainly adept at the derring do.

.. that cast member being William Powell. I'll get to that later This is the tale, remade in 1939 and in sound, of four friends in the British army, friends from childhood. Richard Arlen has the starring role here as Lt. Harry Faversham. Always brought up to feel that cowardice is the worst character trait one can display, Harry grows up in fear of - well - fear! So when he gets notice that his regiment is being sent to the Sudan, he tries to pretend he didn't get that notice and has just coincidentally decided to resign. He threw his notice into the fire but didn't notice the fire isn't burning. His three friends see the notice and deem him a coward. They send him three feathers as a sign of their disgust. Harry's fiancee, Ethnee (Fay Wray), also disapproves and gives him a fourth feather. Harry's father, on his deathbed, advises Harry to kill himself!

So now Harry sets out to the Sudan as a civilian, determined to make his former friends take their feathers back. Fortunately for Harry, the British army has been extremely incompetent and is under siege by the locals. So here is his chance to redeem himself and rescue his friends! The plot takes it from there!

Now back to William Powell. Throughout his tenure at Paramount, Powell had been either playing the buffoon ("Forgotten Faces") or a villain ("Feel My Pulse"). But a funny thing happened just before this film was made - Powell made a couple of talking films. And the public discovered he had quite a distinguished voice. Thus in this, his last silent film, Paramount gave his character some dignity for a change. This film is worth studying if only for that. In fact, in five years, Powell will be the only major male member of the cast who still has a notable film career. Arlen had a fine speaking voice, but he was one of many casualties of the talkies. Clive Brook had an autocratic British accent, and this just did not mesh with the roles and the image he had in silents. Plus he - like many Hollywood stars in the 30s - had numerous threats made concerning the kidnapping of his children. Because of these threats he and his wife and children moved back to England in 1936.

In summary, this is a rousing adventure film and one of the last silent films Paramount made and is very much worth seeking out.

Paramount's final all-silent movie (with a synchronized music score and a few sound effects) was The Four Feathers (1929). Far more faithful to the Empire-at-all-costs spirit of the novel than later versions, the mood here is far less romantic (in both senses of that word). In fact, although Fay Wray plays the heroine, her role is really quite small (and she is unattractively photographed to boot). William Powell has a larger role to play, although his character is overshadowed by Richard Arlen who makes a reasonably convincing stab at the Sun-Never-Sets hero (and as his role is completely silent, his accent never shatters this illusion). Watch for a natural-born actor, Harold Hightower, in his only movie role as the boy with the monkey. Directors Schoedsack and Cooper (of King Kong fame) contribute some really thrilling, shot-on-exotic-locations, all-action sequences, including an eye-numbing hippo stampede that seems to go on forever yet never runs out of puff.