On se bat aux Indes

Sure, it's a little dated... it's already a period piece. Peter Lawford is "Captain Lenbridge", framed by a spy. He had just proposed to his girl, but all that is put on hold, and off to jail he goes. He re-enlists under a different name, and tries to make good. Lots of military action, planning and plotting. This one is very okay. Nothing too special. According to the card at the very end, this actually was filmed at the Khyber Pass, although it seems like going to an awful lot of trouble for a pretty ordinary scene. This one was made about halfway through Lawford's career. Directed by british Allan Davis. Looks like this was the first film he had directed. It's good, but not great. Shown now and then on Turner Classic.

This film does have an interesting set-up but never takes full advantage of it. There's nothing clever about the beginning, wherein British Fusilier Captain Lawford is court martialed for being a Russian spy and imprisoned, but things get intriguing when he escapes and joins the military again, inspired by the idea that it would be the last place the authorities would be expected to look for him. Now an enlisted man, he has to hide his abilities and keep a low profile, but circumstances put his masquerade in jeopardy. If written properly, this could be an effective and suspenseful story, but not so here. The film goes off into a simplistic hero-redeemed thread that seems more concerned with using MGM's access to the real Khyber Pass in Afghanistan than with the complications of Lawford's plight. A pity. But for fans of British Colonial War movies this one does have a fairly well-done and believable action climax. How the producer coaxed MGM into shooting on location in Afghanistan is the only interesting question regarding this movie. Or maybe one more: how did Lawford's character escape from military prison? We never see this and it's never explained. Just another potentially suspenseful scene not taken advantaged of by the filmmakers.

Lawford? He's handsome, tanned and sports a fine moustache, but he was never leading man material and proves it again here. He's too reticent an actor; there's little energy or passion visible from him. The role is that of a man wrongly and ruinously convicted who must submerge himself in a lower (military) station, then rise up and redeem himself when occasion demands it. A role requiring a mix of outrage and tightly-coiled intensity. Not the role for a dapper "cocktails anyone?" kind of smooth lounge loafer. Lawford is directed to treat all this as if slightly disturbed from missing a dinner engagement.

Richard Greene, in the second lead, is far better suited to Lawford's role, but alas, he gets The Other Hero role: the one that doesn't get the girl and gets saved by the Big Hero (Lawford). Janice Rule and Leo G. Carroll pop up here and there, and Sean McClory as Lawford's likable enlisted buddy is more enjoyable than anybody else, but disappears before the film even gets to its big action climax. And John Abbott is one of the top-billed actors, yet he disappears early on. Then again, not much should really be expected considering the film is scored by studio hack Alberto Colombo, written by the mediocre Leon Gordon (this being his last movie) and helmed by an inconsequential English television director named Allan Davis.

This unusual film stars a young and dapper Peter Lawford. As I started to watch the film I doubted that I would like it because I have never been a big Lawford fan. But, to my pleasant surprise, the combination of an interesting story line and an exceptional performance by Lawford made it a most enjoyable experience for me. The plot has Lawford, a British officer, framed as a traitor who has sold military secrets to the Russians who are backing insurgents in India. He is ceremoniously publicly humiliated and drummed out of the service. After that he is scheduled to go on trial in a civil court but he escapes and gets back into the service by using a fake name. He spends the remainder of the film trying to get back his good name and see that justice is done. There are excellent battlefield scenes in this film. I think that you will enjoy this "sleeper" of a movie.

---SPOILER---

In this period picture set in the Indian "raj" in the mid-1800s, Peter Lawford is a British army officer framed for espionage by Russian spies and drummed out of the army. He escapes from the police on his way to prison and makes his way to India to gather evidence to clear himself, a task he figures to accomplish by enlisting in the army under a different name. A variation on the old "Four Feathers" story, this low-budgeter from MGM can't make up its mind whether it's a thriller (Lawford trying to clear his name and find the real spies) or an action picture (the British fighting rebellious Afghan tribesmen in the Khyber Pass) and doesn't really succeed at either--you know that Lawford's going to clear himself (he does) and that the British army will win the day (they do). There's some odd casting (Janice Rule is Lawford's British sweetheart but doesn't even try to hide her American accent, Australian actor Michael Pate plays a Cockney soldier with a laughably exaggerated Cockney accent, American actor Richard Hale--who often played Indian chiefs in westerns--plays a Russian spymaster in the same kind of chopped, singsong manner in which he played Indians), and the picture overall is stiff and mechanical; a burst of action at the end isn't particularly well done (although it was filmed on location at the Khyber Pass and uses hundreds of extras), and even Lawford's charm, good looks and way with a line can't really save it.

It's a bit better than most of the innumerable period "action" clunkers Sam Katzman was churning out at Columbia--several of them with the same setting as this picture--at around the same time, but that's about all that can be said for it.

After an officer is drummed out of one of the brigades of the British empire for being accused of and then convicted of selling secrets to Russian agents, he joins a different brigade and eventually winds up having to deal with his accusers and the real culprits, everything being shifted from London to a remote part of India where an insurgency is being stoked by the Russians. The similarity to what is happening today in Afghanistan makes this rather intriguing, though the best parts occur in London before the action shifts to India. Peter Lawford was an original Rat Pack member (with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., etc..), and even if this film is pre Rat Pack, with this film you can see why he'd later fit in so well in Las Vegas. Even as he's being officially kicked out of his elite brigade in front of all the assembled ranks, which is one of the films better parts, he still looks like he could care less. On the lam in London for escaping from the civilian police, he gets a job as a bartender in a rundown section of town and listens in on and then butts into a conversation as a sergeant is busy trying to pick up on a supposedly loose woman. Lawford's character is socially above them, but due to the circumstances he's now at the bottom of the social ladder in civilian society. When he joins another regiment he comes in as a private, yet through it all this guy has undeniable class and a saving sense of humor. The film itself isn't half bad, as Lawford's character finds out who actually did sell those military secrets. His character's eventual reinstatement into his rightful place in the military and society is a foregone conclusion. The battle scenes are filmed on location (in Southern California?), and aren't that impressive. What's more impressive is what the Russians do to the real culprit in another scene which is the most intense in a film that lacks, for the most part, intensity.