Legião Sinistra

One of the few Foreign Legion films that takes the Legion out of the desert. The Legion was instrumental in the conquest of Indochina in the 1880s, and fought a bloody, futile war in a vain attempt to retain it, from 1946-54. In the late 40s, the French government prohibited sending conscripts to serve in Indochina, so the Foreign Legion was greatly expanded. A major falsehood presented by the film is the great effort made by former SS enlistees to conceal their past, since the French were said to execute any they discovered. The reverse was in fact true, and the French actively (though covertly) sought out and recruited former Wehrmacht and SS men. For the first time in the Legion's history, large enlistment bonuses were paid and former officers and senior noncoms were advanced to sergeant upon completion of training and a short probation period. Jobs were hard to come by in postwar Germany, and the French eagerly made use of this large pool of disciplined, fully trained professional killers. Just the thing for a dirty, distant, unpopular war.

Dick Powell joins the Legion to find a wanted SS war criminal. Despite the above, most of the movie is quite realistic and fast moving. There are good action, and even training sequences, and the atmosphere is appropriately gritty and depressing. The legionnaires are depicted with American M1 rifles. This was accurate in the early part of the war. Ironically, these were later replaced by inferior and obsolete French equipment.

An interesting mix of war movie and film noir done reasonably well.

A lot of post war politics gets mixed up in Rogue's Regiment, a story about a manhunt for an escaped Nazi war criminal. The plot takes a lot from the Orson Welles classic, The Stranger.

But when Edward G. Robinson is hunting Orson Welles and tracks him to Connecticut he's in the comfort zone of the good old USA even if he doesn't know that Welles is whom he seeks. But Dick Powell as an Army Intelligence Officer tracks his man all the way to Southeast Asia and has to join the French Foreign Legion in order to smoke him out.

Which brings us to the point that Rogue's Regiment can lay claim to the fact that it's the first Hollywood motion picture to talk about the Vietnam War. It wasn't Vietnam then, it was French Indochina where the French are rather foolishly trying to reestablish colonial control. A whole lot of history might have changed in the 20th Century if they had realized colonialism was dead. The rebels were called the Viet Minh then and they were making life very tough for French troops outside their outposts. Six years after this film was made, these same French Foreign Legionaires and regular French Army troops would be surrendering at Dienbienphu. But that's getting way ahead of this story.

The Foreign Legion has been the host to all kinds of criminals and other assorted riff-raff since its founding. They ask no questions when you enlist and Germans, some of whom might have been occupying France, are enlisting. It's here that our man hopes to find anonymity and here to where Dick Powell tracks him down.

With the able assistance of French Intelligence Officer Marta Toren who is working a case of her own, Powell ferrets his man out. In fact he uses the same gambit that Robinson does in The Stranger. There's another well known Nazi in the Legion company and Powell uses him as bait.

Such folks as Stephen McNally, Vincent Price, Edgar Barrier and James Millican fill out the cast in this story set in the then exotic locale of Indochina. Carol Thurston who played the tragic Tremartini in Cecil B. DeMille's The Story Of Dr. Wassell also set in Southeast Asia plays another exotic female in love with the wrong guy.

Though Rogue's Regiment gets a little silly at times, Powell gets captured by the Viet Minh and escapes rather too easily, almost like one of those serials, still the film is generally good. And being a first to talk about the war in Indochina, Rogue's Regiment is a historic milestone of a film.

I doubt though that the folks at Universal Pictures thought they were establishing a milestone.

To be fair to this, it does inject a little twist into the usual French Foreign Legion story. This time the Americans implant an agent "Corbett" (Dick Powell) into the platoon in the hope that he can track down a senior Nazi who is trying to get himself (and some loot) to safety after WWII. It's set in French Indo-China rather than North Africa, so there is some scope for a bit of jungle antics as the two men play a bit of cat and mouse. The mystery is helped along by Vincent Price and his dodgy accent as "Van Patten", a travelling art dealer and by the glorified pub singer Lili" (Märta Torén) whom, to be fair, can actually hold a note for her two numbers. It doesn't take us long to work out who is who but the method of smuggling the spoils is quite innovative and though the production is pretty run of the mill, the decent pace keeps it quite entertaining for ninety minutes.

The French are having a hard time with the Viet Minh guerrillas of Ho Chi Minh operating in the jungles in Indochina and striking whenever they can while staying hidden out of reach, creating a constant terror for the Europeans, but this film is not much about that. To combat these insidious freedom fighters France is applying the Foreign Legion, and after the war many ex-Nazis join this 'Rogues Regiment' where they can go on living in anonymity, even if they are chased all over the world. Dick Powell is assigned the mission to find a certain Nazi fugitive hiding in this army, so he joins the legion himself and finds it swarming with Nazis among the other usual delinquents. Vincent Price provides the guerrillas with weapons and ammunition and knows the wanted fugitive, having helped him to secretly join the legion, and there is an attractive night club singer Märta Torén who knows them all, whom Dick Powell falls in love with like everyone else. It's a tricky story amidst some difficult jungle fights, but finally Dick Powell gets his man, while in reality he actually got away - a certain Alois Brunner, who is here called Martin Brunner with some traits of Martin Bormann, another mystery Nazi who some believe got away. It is not a bad film, but it is not altogether outstanding either, but it is interesting for its anticipation of the Vietnam war which would go on for almost 30 years, the French giving up and leaving it to the Americans to keep up the hopeless case. Stephen McNally as Brunner is actually the most interesting character, while Dick Powell is just an ordinary tough guy and Vincent Price that ordinary crook he generally makes, while Marta Toren offers some refreshment. It is exotic and intriguing but hardly first class.

Robert Florey directed à lot of B movies and some very fine titles like "Murder in the rue Morgue", "the Beast with five fingers" (with a fantastic Peter Lorre) , "the Man behind the mask" (very original fantastic movie with again Peter Lorre, but completely forgotten) before shooting a lot of TV episodes.

This "Rogue's regiment" is perhaps not a classic but remains in the inventive visual style of Robert Florey. The introduction about the last nazis chieves is surprising. Then begins the chase of the very last unknown nazi chief by Dick Powell in Indochina in the Legion Étrangère. The cinematography is chiaroscuro with most of the sequences happening at night, very creepy atmosphere close to film noir. The casting is great with Stephen McNally frightening as the fleeing nazi and of course Vincent Price, charismatic as ever. From a story by Robert Florey, "Rogue's regiment" was written by Robert Buckner who also wrote great titles for Errol Flynn.

"Rogue's regiment" is a fine surpise.