Only the Brave

Following a completely unnecessary introduction about the US Civil War (unless you know NOTHING about it), the story begins late in the conflict. It seems the Union want a volunteer to go on what is likely a suicide mission...to pretend to be a spy and get captured in order to give false plans to the Confederates. After Captain Braydon (Gary Cooper) catches his fiancee with another man, he volunteers for this suicide mission.

What made this movie just awful to me wasn't Cooper....he was his usual excellent and restrained self. But the Southerners in the film almost seemed like parodies of Southerners...with outrageously exaggerated accents and manners. While it might have played fine in 1930, when seen today it might just elicit laughter...it's that bad and overdone when combined with the occasionally terrible dialog. So my advice is that if you see this forgettable film, try to pay attention to Cooper...and ignore most everyone else.

After the success of Gary Cooper's first all talking film, The Virginian, he and his leading lady Mary Brian were teamed again in a Civil War story, Only the Brave. Sad to say the results were not as good as The Virginian.

Only the Brave is the kind of Victorian melodrama that was popular on the stage during the latter half of the 19th century. It was dated for the Depression era audiences when the film first came out, let alone for today's audience.

Cooper is a Union Army officer who after being jilted by girlfriend, Virginia Bruce, volunteers on what could be a suicide mission. He volunteers to go behind enemy lines disguised in Confederate gray as a staff officer to Robert E. Lee. He's to ride to a certain plantation which is a local brigade headquarters and deliberately let himself by caught with maps showing false Union troop dispositions. Of course the penalty then as now is execution.

Of course what happens is the plantation owner's lovely, crinolined, mushmouth drawling Mary Brian falls for Cooper, causing no small amount of jealousy with Phillips Holmes a most hot blooded southerner indeed. And Coop's charm is such that Brian falls for him as well.

It actually starts, only starts mind you, to get funny as Cooper is trying to be caught and Brian keeps saving him. I think Red Skelton must have seen some of this for his later film, A Southern Yankee.

Personally I think the best performance in the film is from an actor named William Le Maire who plays the sentry guarding Cooper after he's been caught and courtmartialed. He's one reluctant rebel who's very happy not to be in battle as the rest of his company runs off to act on Cooper's false information. His scenes with Cooper are very droll and are the best in the film.

Only the Brave will never be regarded as one of Gary Cooper's great films. It does have its moments, but for the most part it's a terribly dated and old fashioned, films that some my find quaint and some may find ridiculous.

This film has an interesting beginning. It has a map of the US as it existed in 1860, and then zooms in on the deep south and shows farming there, then zooms in on Ohio and shows a farmer farming there, shows the lead up to the Civil War, and then goes back to the map with the edges of the old Confederacy ablaze. Then there is an odd close up of a mute General Grant writing a letter about how he hopes that the war will be over in August. Maybe it was the general's heavy drinking or optimistic thinking, but the war did not end until April 1865. No explanation is ever given for this short scene.

That is as about as violent as this film gets. Gary Cooper plays Captain James Brayden who joins up with his Union troops but has his four day leave abruptly cancelled. He decides to take his leave anyways as he desperately wants to see his girl, Elizabeth, played by an unrecognizable Virginia Bruce before her MGM days. Brayden risks his career only to see and hear his girl betraying him with another man, a stocky older fellow whom she says she really loves. Since this fellow looks like a 40ish version of Mr. Potato Head, I can only assume he is rich or Elizabeth has insanity in her family.

Brayden rides back to the Union camp, where he has a rather mild punishment meted out to him for being AWOL, given his past exemplary record. Brayden suggests an alternative. His bunk mate is a young guy with everything to live for whose assignment is to cross into Confederate territory and be captured as a spy with the Confederate troops lifting deliberately misleading information from him. Of course, this also means he will be shot as a spy. Braden asks that he take the younger man's place in the assignment. Coop doesn't really get to show too much depth here, but the idea is that he now distrusts all women and feels like he has nothing to live for.

The best part of the film is the Virginia plantation where Brayden shows up, dressed as a Confederate soldier who is lost, trying to get to Spotsylvania. Other Confederate troops are encamped there, having a ball - literally. Apparently they didn't get the memo that the Union troops had sacked every plantation around central Virginia by 1864, because this looks like Tara in "Gone With the Wind" in 1860.

Meanwhile, Brayden is constantly either trying to get captured by dropping stuff that only a Union solder would have - stuff that says USA for example, but no dice. Nobody suspects a thing. Then he tries to just plain get shot by playing up to the daughter of the plantation owner (Mary Brian as Barbara Calhoun) who has the hots for him, and then insulting her, and rubbing it in the face of her trigger happy beau (Phillips Holmes). Again, Coop just can't seem to get suspected, captured, or killed.

When Brayden finally is suspected as a spy, as the Confederate soldiers chase him around the house, Barbara keeps saving him and hiding him, despite Brayden's protests. How will this all work out? Watch and find out.

Because the cinematographer here either neglected to or could not do close ups, it is really hard to get a feel for what Coop or Mary Brian are feeling during the emotional or the humorous parts of the film. I'd say this film doesn't measure up on any scale to the previous year's "The Virginian" with the same two leads - Coop and Mary Brian - and seems like it was made quickly and rather carelessly just to cash in on the chemistry they showed in that film. I'd give it a very mild recommendation to a general audience, but maybe a little stronger of a recommendation to those of you interested in the early talkies.