In spite of the heavy expense of making The Four Feathers, box office returns were enormous. But the windfall came too late for Alexander Korda to save his financially strapped Denham Studios from being taken over by rival interests.

Georges Perinal and Osmond Borradaile's color cinematography received an Academy Award nomination.

The film was nominated for both the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and the Mussolini Cup at the Venice Film Festival. Because of the war, however, the Cannes festival was cancelled. As a result, The Four Feathers was one of seven films made in 1939 chosen to be shown in a special retrospective honor at the 55th Cannes International Film Festival in 2002.

"It cannot fail to be one of the best films of the year....even the richest of the ham goes smoothly down, savoured with humor and satire." - Graham Greene

"Perfectly cast and presented...a triumph of early colour." - Halliwell's Film & Video Guide (HarperPerennial).

"Grand adventure....[C. Aubrey] Smith is just wonderful as the tale-spinning Army veteran." - Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide (Plume).

"A typically polished vehicle for saluting a certain British mythology, with a rousing score...superb Technicolor camerawork...and solid performances all around. The fourth (and best) version of A.E.W. Mason's ripping yarn." - Geoff Andrew, Time Out Film Guide 2002 (Penguin Books, 2002).

"A.E.W. Mason's novel has been adapted to the screen several times, but this lavish production is by far the best...Compared to other "exotic" adventure films of the late 1930s, The Four Feathers is more polished and serious, and it was certainly one of the most expensive. Its combination of exotic locales with troubled British military men is an obvious influence on the films of David Lean that would follow. Its mad plotting, though, still stands on its own." - Mike Mayo, War Movies (Visible Ink).

"The film is imperial melodrama with a vengeance...It still looks good half a century later, with Clements sternly determined, Richardson cool, June Duprez exotic, Aubrey Smith's eyebrows at their crustiest, and John Laurie raving marvellously as the Khalifa. There is a proper fin de siecle appearance to the costumes and settings in England, a rousing troop embarkation, huge shots of Kitchener's river fleet being dragged up the Nile (by Clements among others), the famous sequence in which Richardson loses his topi, an eerily filmed night attack by fuzzy-wuzzies, and a spectacular charge by the Khalifa's mounted hordes as the action finale. The cavalry skirmish in which Winston Churchill took part is not seen, but the historical element is sound, and the picture is really what the cinema of Empire was all about - duty, derring-do, and the Pax Britannica. It is a long way from Band Aid." - George MacDonald Fraser, The Hollywood History of the World (Fawcett).

"June Duprez, the fiancée, is the only woman in the cast. She postulates prettily and attractively, with little else to do. Rest of the cast is excellent, with C. Aubrey Smith, enacting a lovable, elderly bore. John Clements, the hero, is excellent. Photography is excellent along with the direction by Zoltan Korda." - Variety Movie Guide (Prentice Hall).

"Britain had tried before to match Hollywood in its specialty fields, such as musicals and action films. British critics were very kind when the efforts came close, but in truth the flow, the rhythm and the spark of inspiration were never quite there, however careful the copy. The Four Feathers nails all this to the wall. Its action scenes, pulsatingly thrilling, totally real, match anything from a similar Hollywood epic, while its colour photography...was the best the world had seen....But the abiding memory of the film remains in its panoramas: dozens of Arabs heaving small sailing vessels along the Nile, thousands of natives charging at their enemy, the tense prison rescue, and the battle scenes themselves, full of the sweat, dust, heat, guts and desperation of desert combat. The emotive tug of such scenes is irresistible." - BritMovie (www.britmovie.co.uk).

"The Four Feathers is satisfying as a war film, with stirring battle scenes - the jailbreak sequence is spectacular - and a spirit of breathless boy's own adventure throughout...But the whiff of racism is unmistakable, and its celebration of empire is hard to stomach today." - Mark Duguid, ScreenOnline (www.screenonline.org.uk/).

"Some critics on the Epinions site attack the film for its old hat imperialist symbolism and discredited Orientalism: a combination of the jingoist past and the spuriously continuing exotic. No doubt, the critics have a point, but the film did present a noble view to the British of their duty and history. That view had sustained Britain down to 1939, the year THE FOUR FEATHERS was made, when She [England] prepared to stand alone against Adolph Hitler, while we, a nation of Harry Favershams twiddled until Japan forced us to meet our own duties and traditions. Most of all, THE FOUR FEATHERS is a universally applicable story of how conscience forces some individuals to help their brothers and sisters." - Macresarf1, Epinions (www.epinions.com).

by Rob Nixon & Jeff Stafford