“The Four Feathers” is based on the novel by A.E.W. Mason. The novel has been made into several movies including three silent films and most recently a Heath Ledger version in 2002. The 1939 film is considered the best. It was directed by Zoltan Korda (“Sahara”). His brother Alexander produced and spared no expense to make it a big picture. He also used the new Technicolor process to present it in vibrant color. The movie was nominated for Best Cinematography, Color by the Academy Awards. Much of the shooting was done on location in the Sudan. The battle scenes were shot on the actual locations. Some of the extras had participated in or were eyewitnesses to the battles that had taken place 40 years earlier. The Kordas were interested in fidelity and hired several technical advisers including Brigadier Hector Campbell, who drilled the actors so their soldiering would be realistic. However, when the advisers told him that British officers would have worn their dress blues to a ball, Zoltan insisted on red because “this is Technicolor!” The movie fits squarely in the subgenre of imperial adventure films. Two other good examples came out that same year – “Gunga Din” and “Beau Geste”. The Kordas, who were Hungarian refugees, loved Great Britain and lauded it in their films. The public agreed as the movie was a huge hit. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
The film takes place a few years after Gordon’s defeat in the siege of Khartoum. Lord Kitchener is preparing an expedition to invade the Sudan to get payback. Harry Faversham (John Clements) is with his friends Durrance (Ralph Richardson), Burroughs (Donald Gray), and Willoughby (Jack Allen). Harry announces his engagement to Ethne Burroughs (June Duprez) and it is clear from his reaction that Durrance was odd man out in that triangle. When Harry finds out their regiment is off to see the elephant, he resigns his commission and leaves the army. This has been foreshadowed in the opening where the ten year-old Harry is forced to attend a geezer gabfest where his father regales on his bravery at the Battle of Balaclava. His theme is war is glorious and there is no place for cowards. In fact, cowards should commit suicide. Harry is convinced that if put in the same position as all those stodgy relatives that grace the walls of his mansion, he will besmirch the family honor. Better to admit your cowardice than prove it on the battlefield. If he thinks his friends and fiancĂ© will have his back on this, he is soon set straight when they present him with white feathers. The feathers tell Harry that they know he is a coward. Harry realizes he has made a big mistake and is determined to redeem himself. His plan is to save each of the officers’ lives while in disguise. He will then return to England and shove the feathers in Ethne’s face. It’s no more implausible than stealing the family sapphire and ending up in the French Foreign Legion (“Beau Geste”) or capturing a guru in a Thugee temple (“Gunga Din”).
If you want to see what passed for an adventure movie in the 1930’s, you can not do better than the trio of “The Four Feathers”, “Beau Geste”, and “Gunga Din”. All three are very British. The main characters are honorable, brave, and loyal. Harry Faversham lacks these three traits, at first. His acquiring them is ridiculous, but undeniably entertaining. Implausibilities are necessary for the plot to work, so leave your intellect at the door. It’s old school and unabashed about it. The Kordas were not interested in revisionism. Parts of the movie look like an early Tarzan movie. The local color, although exotic to a British audience, has a tinge of cultural superiority. For those of you not familiar with the Mahdist War and the Sudan Campaign that was part of it, you would think the British were in the right and were liberating an oppressed people from the dictatorial rule of religious fanatics. They may have been religious fanatics, but Faversham’s regiment is playing the role of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. You see a similar historical flipping in movies like “Zulu”. Perhaps the British Empire lasted longer because movies like this techni-colored what was actually happening in the empire.
Aside from reversing who the good guys were, the movie can’t be faulted for telling the story the audience wanted. And it can excuse itself by pointing out it was based on a popular novel. It is certainly well-made. The visuals are striking. In some cases, it bears some resemblance to “Lawrence of Arabia”. The cast is top notch. Clements went on to a knighthood for his long career on screen and stage. Ralph Richardson is outstanding as Durrance. In this case, he really is playing a blind guy, unlike all his other movies where he appears to be playing a blind guy. (Watch him next time you see one of his movies.) C. Aubrey Smith is type cast as the blustery General Burroughs, but why not take him off the shelf for a role he was born to play. June Duprez is lovely as Ethne and handles the character’s emotional turmoil effectively. The love triangle is portrayed in an adult way and is not maudling. Ethne has her own feminine sense of honor to deal with. It’s not all romance and intrigue. There are some rousing combat scenes of the mowing down the natives with modern weaponry type. There is even a jail break. Something for everyone, except humor. The stiff upper lips of the characters do not allow for grins.
As a history lesson set within an adventure movie, “The Four Feathers” has some merit. The Sudan Campaign is greatly simplified and the enemy is demonized, but the basic facts are there. If you care to know them. I definitely would encourage you to read up on it rather than swallowing Korda’s official position. The Battle of Omdurman is reenacted in a simplistic way and there was no jail break, but no one expects it to be a documentary. When it comes to watching the movie as a substitute for reading the novel, it has less merit. (See my comparison below.) But it does fit my theory that a movie screenplay should improve on the novel that is its source. This movie improves on its novel much more than most. Watch the movie, ditch the book.
THE BOOK - *** Spoiler alert: This section will discuss differences in the plot of the book and the movie. It is best to read this section if you have seen the movie and do not intend to read the book (which is what I would recommend).
The novel was written by A.E.W. Mason. It is considered his masterpiece. He also wrote “Fire Over England” which was turned into a movie in 1937 by the Kordas. The screenplay was written primarily by R.C. Sherriff (with help from Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis). Sherriff was a veteran of WWI and was severely wounded at Passchendaele. He is most famous for his play “Journey’s End”. He went on to a good career as a screenwriter. He wrote “The Four Feathers” a year after being nominated for “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and later wrote “The Dam Busters”.
Sherriff made significant changes to the book. In the scene with the old veterans reminiscing, Gen. Feversham (Sherriff changed the spelling of the name for some reason) specifically calls out his son as a poetry reading wimp. There is more emphasis on the loathsomeness of cowardice. It is so harsh that a Lt. Sutch (in the movie this role is Dr. Sutton) goes to Harry’s room to commiserate with him. Sutch perceives that Harry is stressed about upholding the family honor, but he does not go the extra mile to help him. The book does a better job explaining Harry’s decision to resign his commission. Sherriff simplifies the scene where Harry reveals his engagement to Ethne. In the book, a mysterious telegram arrives that turns out to be word of the regiment’s deployment. Trench (Burroughs in the movie) and Willoughby ferret out the message by visiting a Capt. Castleton. When Harry resigns his commission (a scene that does not appear in the book), it is Trench, Willoughby, and Castleton who send the feathers. In the book, Durrance is clueless about the feathers and Harry’s cowardice! The confrontation with Ethne is harsher as she gives him her feather rather than having Harry insist she join the trio.
Durrance goes off to Egypt separate from the trio. Most of the novel actually concentrates on the Durrance and Ethne relationship. Durrance returns after an uneventful tour in Egypt and renews his courtship of Ethne. All he knows is Harry has disappeared into the Middle East. Ethne won’t tell him anything, but she is determined to not ruin another man’s career. By this time, she is feeling guilty about the role she played in Harry leaving the army. She jilts Durrance, but they can remain friends. He returns to the Sudan and goes blind under circumstances similar to the book, but Sherriff adds the battle scene where Burroughs and Willoughby get captured and Harry saves Durrance’s life. In the book, Harry is disguised as a Greek, not a mute native. There is no reason for Harry to save Durrance because Durrance was not one of the feather-presenters! When he returns to England, Ethne has changed her mind out of sympathy and Durrance accepts her change of heart. Soon after, Ethne is visited by Willoughby who brings her his feather and his decision to forgive Harry. In a ludicrous plot development, Willoughby does not forgive Harry because he saved his life. It is because Harry finds some lost letters sent by Gen. Gordon during the siege of Khartoum! How this is an act of bravery is left to the reader to puzzle out. Even more perplexing is Mason’s decision to have Castleton die without an opportunity to return his feather! Willoughby’s visit confirms her feeling that she mistreated Harry, but she is locked in to marrying the noble Durrance. He is still totally clueless about the whole feather thing. In the book, the widowed Mrs. Adair is a friend of Ethne, but a snoop who ferrets out the story. She is determined to sabotage the Durrance/Ethne engagement because she is in love with Durrance. This despicable character was excised by Sherriff in a good streamlining of the soap operaish plot. The romance is tedious and almost comical. Ethne spends all her time hiding that she is back in love with Harry while Durrance is trying to use his enhanced senses to determine if she is truly in love with him. He moves back and forth on this. He eventually pieces together the story of the four feathers, but the reader has known all this mystery from early on so there is no suspense to this.
In the last third of the book, Mason finally concentrates on Harry. Trench has been taken captive and put in the prison. Harry gets himself captured and tortured as a spy. He is thrown into the prison, but with no real plan. The escape is laughably unrealistic and too easy. Mason leaves his readers shaking their heads rather than on the edge of their seats. Harry returns to Ethne, but although she now loves him again, she is loyal to Durrance who is in one of his “she loves me” periods. When they next meet, Durrance uses his spidey-sense to finally understand the dynamic that has been hammered for a hundred pages. Harry and Ethne get married and Durrance is their best man.
I am a book lover and a movie lover. I do not favor one over the other. I am not one of those snobs who feel it is next to impossible for a movie to be better than the book. If you are a reader of this blog, you know my belief is that a competent screenwriter should be able to improve on the novel. R.C. Sherriff is more than competent. His version of “The Four Feathers” is considered the best adaptation of the novel. A novel that was so popular it has been made into numerous movies. I would have to question why because the novel is not good. It is much too long and repetitive. Much of it is tedious with a romance at the center that is uninteresting. There is little action and the hero is gone for long stretches. Parts of it make no sense. If you have seen the entertaining 1939 movie, you would assume the novel would be a rousing story. It isn’t. Sherriff’s adaptation is nothing short of amazing. He improves upon the novel in almost every aspect. (This reminds me of the screenplay for 1992’s “Last of the Mohicans” which improved greatly on another terrible “classic”.) Sherriff took the concept of the feathers and built a tale around them. He set the movie in a historical context with the Battle of Omdurman as the centerpiece. There are no battles in the book. While his historical take is simplistic and there was no prison break, at least he has some action set pieces.
His decision to have Harry darken his skin and play a mute seems unrealistic but is more swallowable than the book Harry’s machinations. Some of the changes Sherriff made seem so appropriate that one must ask what Mason was thinking when he wrote the book. For instance, only one feather is returned because of Harry saving one of his mates. (He doesn’t even know Castleton, whose feather is not returned!) Downplaying the romance of Ethne and Durrance in favor of the adventures of Harry was an obvious choice. Eliminating Mrs. Adair and Castleton did not take a master’s course in screenwriting. And it is hard to give him too much credit for making Durrance one of the feathered friends. Every change he made was to make up for shortcomings in the book.
I have done several of these book/movie comparisons and the screenplay for “The Four Feathers” (1939) is second only to “Last of the Mohicans” when it comes to improving on the source novel.
BOOK = D
MOVIE = B-
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