SYNOPSIS

Harry Faversham grows up in a British military household that puts a high premium on unwavering duty and service to country. He enters the army to please his stern father, but on the eve of his regiment's deployment to the Sudan to fight in a war Harry doesn't believe in, he resigns his commission. As Harry is explaining his position to his fiancée, Ethne Burroughs, daughter of the distinguished General Burroughs, he is delivered a package containing three white feathers, symbols of cowardice, one each from his three friends and fellow officers: Durrance (Ralph Richardson), Willoughby (Jack Allen), and Burroughs (Donald Gray). Seeing the disappointment on Ethne's face, he adds a fourth feather. He then sets out to prove himself by traveling to the Sudan, disguising himself as a mute Arab, and saving his three friends from certain death, returning a white feather to each of them.

Producer: Alexander Korda
Associate Producer: Irving Asher
Director: Zoltan Korda
Screenplay: R. C. Sherriff, with additional dialogue by Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis; based on the novel by A. E. W. Mason
Cinematography: Georges Perinal
Film Editing: Henry Cornelius
Production Design: Vincent Korda
Costume Design: Godfrey Brennan, Rene Hubert
Musical Director: Muir Mathieson
Cast: John Clements (Harry Faversham), Ralph Richardson (Captain John Durrance), C. Aubrey Smith (General Burroughs), June Duprez (Ethne Burroughs), Allan Jeayes (General Faversham), Jack Allen (Lieutenant Willoughby), Donald Gray (Peter Burroughs), Frederick Culley (Dr. Sutton), Clive Baxter (Young Harry Faversham).
C-130m.

Why THE FOUR FEATHERS is Essential

Easily the best of several film versions of A. E. W. Mason's rousing novel of redemption set during the height of British Imperialism, The Four Feathers (1939) is also considered one of the great triumphs of Hungarian producer Alexander Korda, and consequently, of all British cinema. Aside from the widely hailed color cinematography, location filming, and thrilling action scenes, this version of The Four Feathers is also remembered for career-defining performances by several important British actors, including Ralph Richardson and C. Aubrey Smith.

The Four Feathers is unabashed in its glorification of The Empire, and like their previous films Elephant Boy (1937) and The Drum (1938), it was a family affair for the Korda brothers. Zoltan Korda directed the picture and Vincent Korda provided Art Direction, while Alexander oversaw the entire endeavor for London Film Productions. The Technicolor cinematography, hailed as the most naturalistic to that point, was credited to Georges Perinal, though additional photography was by Osmond Borradaile and Robert Krasker. Borradaile and Zoltan Korda shot most of the exterior scenes for The Four Feathers on location in the Sudan, resulting in stunning images. The footage was striking enough that it was often reused as stock footage, appearing in such later films as Zarak (1956), Master of the World (1961), and East of Sudan (1964), a film about the original Khartoum uprising.

Many classic films require a certain adjustment in perspective to fully appreciate them in the context of the time in which they were released. This is certainly true in the case of The Four Feathers. In our more jaded era, notions of honor, loyalty, and bravery do not, perhaps, carry the weight they did in 1939. A greater leap is required to swallow the engrained attitudes of racism and colonial superiority that even at the time of the film's release were becoming outmoded. And surely in our current climate of culture clashes and crisis in the Middle East, the depiction of rabid, bloodthirsty Arabs is a glaring and outdated stereotype. But context is everything, and for a once proud but rapidly diminishing British empire plunged into war, The Four Feathers spoke to the belief that the use of force could be a positive thing in liberating oppressed peoples and that an individual could put aside his own political philosophies for the greater good of comrades and country.

Even though A.E.W. Mason's book displayed some mild criticism of the British involvement in North Africa, it was ultimately a tribute to British military might, a boost to the nation's pride and a natural attraction for Alexander Korda, whose output as the leading British independent film producer of his time often reflected a high regard for his adopted country's history and traditions. As film critic-historian David Thomson has pointed out about the ongoing cinematic project of the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, their work displayed "that incongruous sympathy of one lost empire [the Austro-Hungarian Empire of their birth] for another fast dying." The Four Feathers was arguably their staunchest expression of that.

Alexander Korda employed several military advisors on The Four Feathers to ensure historical accuracy of the period. He did not, however, allow such accuracy to interfere with showmanship. Lead actor John Clements, interviewed by Kulik, recalled shooting a scene where he and Ralph Richardson were costumed as officers attending a ball in a private residence. Uniformed by the best Savile Row tailors, the advisors correctly instructed that the uniforms be blue. Korda reached the set and said, "...'what is this blue uniform?' And the military colonel, or whatever he was, said, ‘But that's correct. This is a private house, not in the mess.' ‘But this is Technicolor!!' Korda said, and the whole thing was changed and we were all dressed in red uniforms.'"

A. E. W. Mason's novel The Four Feathers has proven to be an ever-popular movie property, oft-filmed on both sides of the Atlantic. There were three versions in the silent era, beginning with an American version in 1915, followed by a British film in 1921. The third was also one of the last major studio silent productions, a lavish Merian C. Cooper film for Paramount Pictures in 1929. Co-directed by Lothar Mendes and Ernest B. Schoedsack, this version featured Richard Arlen as Harry Faversham, Fay Wray as Ethne, and Clive Brook as Lt. Durrance. The directing credit for the 1955 version of the story, Storm Over the Nile, was split between Terence Young and Zoltan Korda. The London Films production was a near shot-for-shot remake utilizing the R. C. Sherriff screenplay as well and large chucks of the 1939 film, including most of the final battle sequence. The film starred Anthony Steel as Faversham and Laurence Harvey as Durrance. A television adaptation followed in 1977. The latest theatrical version, directed by Shekhar Kapur in 2002, gives more of a voice to Faversham's Sudanese guide, but is otherwise not the revisionist take on the story that many expected.

by Rob Nixon & John Miller