The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Vincente Minnelli had it right, he wanted Alain Delon for the role of French/Argentine Julio Desnoyers and he would have been perfect in the part. However MGM insisted on an American, but why Glenn Ford. Back in the late forties he was laughable in the part of Don Jose in The Loves of Carmen with Rita Hayworth. Did anyone at MGM screen that before signing him up for this expensive remake of the silent classic The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?

Whatever else Glenn Ford was and I'm a big fan, he just doesn't cut it as the second Rudolph Valentino.

So besides a miscast leading man, they had their troubles with the leading lady as well. Ingrid Thulin was trying to break into the international market as fellow Swedes Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman had done before her. Her Swedish accent was way too thick and supposedly she was indecipherable in her scenes. That familiar voice you hear coming from her mouth is that of Angela Lansbury who was dubbed over Thulin's voice. Poor Ingrid still remained a star in Sweden, but never did get any international acclaim.

The rest of the cast is made of various continental types playing French and Germans. The plot of Vincente Blasco Ibanez's original novel is updated from World War I to World War II and changes are made to accommodate the different geopolitical situation in the two wars. Best performance in the film is that of Paul Henreid who plays Thulin's husband who while he's off to war and a POW camp, she's fooling around in Paris with Ford.

Now you can believe she'd have found Valentino irresistible, but not Glenn Ford.

When I saw this during its first-run release, I was already an avid Minnelli fan but had been forewarned by the reviews that this was not one of his best. I recall enjoying it, nevertheless, and much of my pleasure was due to Minnelli's always inventive visual style, the expensive mounting in CinemaScope and Metrocolor, the interesting cast (not all of them well-chosen, especially the deadly-dull Glenn Ford, who was being assigned to what seemed like every other big budget M-G-M picture during that period), the astute use of Angela Lansbury to dub Ingrid Thulin's lines (though I'm sure that Miss Thulin's own voice, even if she had learned her lines phonetically, would have been preferable), and Andre Previn's very expressive score. (Mr. Previn came to disown a lot of his Hollywood work once he concentrated on conducting major classical orchestras, but I suspect he wouldn't have included this one among those he would prefer that we forget.) Tony Duquette's Four Horsemen figures are a striking addition to the lavish mounting of this production. It's not available on DVD (yet, anyway) and it's probably a safe bet that the VHS version is (ugh!) "formatted"...don't bother! You'll be missing the greater percentage of this film's achievement.

If Vincente Minnelli is to be praised in this film, it his decision to film Ibanez' novel and to cast the fascinating Ingrid Thulin--who has contributed substantially to Bergman's early work and to Swedish theatre. No Hollywood actress could have lent credibility to this role as Ms Thulin did. It is a matter of historical tragedy that Thulin's own voice was not used and Angela Lansbury's voice was used instead.

Lee J Cobb as the patriarch and Glenn Ford as Julio were avoidable decisions. However, the casting of Paul Henreid and Charles Boyer enhanced the film.

What made the film rise over mediocrity? The story and Thulin. Ibanez' work is world renowned and film is a beautiful medium to capture the image of the four horsemen. Interestingly Minnelli is not able to capture the "pale" and the "red" horse on screen--the most difficult of the four horses in technicolor and decides to use smoke and clouds to distract us. According to "The Book of Revelations," the horsemen carried a bow, a sword, a balance and a great Sword. Ingmar Bergman in "the Seventh Seal" and Minnelli transforms the great sword into a scythe. But for this detail, the art direction throughout the movie was commendable.

Erich von Stroheim Jr. was a mere Assistant Director in this work. von Stroheim's body of work in Europe is revered today and one can only speculate about the result had he directed the film instead of Minnelli. Minnelli's film has its moments--Etienne meeting his wife on his return from capture, and Etienne's confrontation with Julio. Yet the film is Hollywood's attempt at presenting a narrative without complexity for audiences who prefer to be spoonfed. Ibanez' novel is still waiting for a good director to film--Minnelli stumbled in his effort to create a masterpiece. One mistake he made was choosing Glenn Ford to play an Argentinan playboy. What a costly mistake!

In Argentina, the family man Julio Madariaga (Lee J. Cobb) is the patriarch of his family and considers his farm the paradise on Earth. One of his daughters, Luisa Desnoyers (Harriet MacGibbon), has married the Frenchman immigrant Marcelo Desnoyers (Charles Boyer) and they have one son, the playboy Julio (Glenn Ford), and one daughter, the gorgeous student of Sorbonne Chi Chi (Yvette Mimieux). His other daughter, Elena von Hartrott (Kathryn Givney), has married the German Karl von Hartrott (Paul Lukas), and they have three sons: Heinrich (Karl Boehm), Gustav and Franz.

In 1938, Heinrich returns from Germany for a family reunion and when he tells that he has joined the SS, the displeased Julio Madariaga has a heart attack and dies. When France is occupied by the Germans, the family reunites in Paris and Franz is the Nazi administrator in France. The alienated Julio has a studio where he paints, and has a love affair with Marguerite Laurier (Ingrid Thulin), the wife of the owner of a newspaper Etienne Laurier (Paul Henreid) that is fighting in Belgium. Meanwhile Chi Chi joins the French resistance and is arrested. Julio uses the influence of his uncle Franz to release her. However, Chi Chi has an argument with Julio for his neutral position. When Chi Chi is tortured to death by Gestapo, Julio joins the resistance, using his relationship with the Germans to get inside information.

"The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is an epic romance with the awakening of a playboy in times of war. The cinematography, art direction and costumes are amazing, but unfortunately the screenplay is shallow and the film is miscast in the lead role. Glenn Ford is never convincing as a French-Argentinean, and too old (46 years old) to be a playboy and son of Charles Boyer (63 years old). Further, it is ridiculous the actors and actresses speaking in English forcing accents in French, German and Spanish. I have never had the chance to see the 1921 original film to compare with this remake by Vincente Minnelli. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Os Quatro Cavaleiros do Apocalipse" ("The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse")

A film that's always been held in a great deal of affection here in Spain (and not just because it's a Blasco Ibañez story, nor because hearing it dubbed into Spanish relieves us of Angela Lansbury). As far as I'm concerned, and pace the other reviewers, Glenn Ford's utterly convincing portrayal of Julio is by far the best thing about it. So what if he's a bit long in the tooth? a great many real-life playboys are, and his maturity makes the romantic dilemmas posed by the plot all the more poignant. From start to finish he's seriously, dangerously likeable, which he certainly needs to be in order to win the love of a beautiful, intelligent and patriotic Frenchwoman over her heroic Resistance husband. The romance actually convinces, against the odds, and saves a movie that might otherwise easily have been a ghastly flop.

After all, what else is there? Andre Previn's music is impressively dramatic but there is a worrying lack of restraint in the score, both in the overblown intro and the pretty but intrusive "love theme" cue, complete with solo violin, which insists on being heard every time the hero and heroine so much as glance at one another. The "four horsemen" vision manages to stay just this side of Monty Python (with the aid of swirling clouds), but doesn't save the opening scenes of the film from lurching full-pelt into overplayed melodrama (the death of the patriarch Madariaga: one too many thunderclaps for a start), and doesn't tie in too well with what was eventually left in from Blasco Ibañez's tale (pestilence? famine? where?). The plot is 100% predictable, and the rest of the acting is competent without being memorable.

I must admit, though, I was impressed by the very Minnelli-esque sequence which took Ford's eyes staring at a scene of dancing and frivolity between Nazi officers and collaborationist women, superimposing the two and mixing in newsreel-style war footage; likewise, Henreid's heartstopping portrayal, in one scene, of a man almost broken by torture, emerging from a Gestapo jail; and the finely judged acceleration at the end towards the story's predictable but satisfying climax. Not a film I will want to make a habit of seeing, but would certainly stand a second and maybe even a third viewing.