Four Feathers

The 1929 silent version of the classic novel by A.E.W. Mason. Young Harry Feversham has wanted to marry his friend Ethne since childhood, but the girl insists that she will only accept a soldier as her husband. Harry fears enlisting, haunted by a tale told to him by his father of a truant officer who was driven to suicide after being sent a white feather by his former comrades - a symbol of cowardice. Despite this, Harry signs up with the British Army anyway, makes three great friends - Durrance, Trench, and Castleton - and becomes engaged to Ethne. After receiving a telegram informing him that his regiment is being assigned to the war in the Sudan, Harry is gripped by fear and resigns from the service. Just like in his childhood nightmare, Harry then receives four white feathers from Durrance, Trench, Castleton - and Ethne, who breaks off their engagement. Pushing aside his lifelong fears, Harry journeys to Sudan to help his friends - and win back Ethne's heart.

Considered the last great film of the silent era, this epic version of The Four Feathers is the work of the team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, best known for King Kong (1933). The original A.E.W. Mason novel had been one of the few books in Cooper's possession during his time as a resistance fighter in the Polish-Soviet War. Cooper and Schoedsack traveled to Tanzania and Sudan to shoot on location, capturing incredible footage like getting a hippo stampede on camera. This was the pair's first narrative film after making the documentaries Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925) and Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927). Handsome (and here mustached) leading man Richard Arlen had starred two years earlier in director William A. Wellman's Wings (1927), the very first film to win the Oscar as Best Picture, and would later appear in the controversial 1932 H.G. Wells adaptation Island of Lost Souls. The lovely Fay Wray is of course best known as the "beauty that killed the beast" in King Kong (her relationship with Cooper and Schoedsack was established with this picture.) Also featured is a young William Powell, who had so far mostly played villains and heels in the silent era. Later he would make his star-making turn as detective Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929) in which his fine speaking voice would be discovered, leading to his immortal role as Nick Charles in the long-running Thin Man series of films from MGM. Despite the fact that talkies were making massive inroads with audiences at the time of The Four Feathers' release, studio exec Adolph Zukor insisted on no talking sequences, though he did allow a synchronized MovieTone musical score with sound effects by William Frederick Peters (as featured in this Alpha Video edition of the film.) Thus, the December 28, 1929 wide release of The Four Feathers would mark the unofficial end of the quickly fading Silent Age. (1929)

Upplagd i sortimentet: 17 februari, 2025