The Four Feathers: Zoltan Korda

I love watching films like Zoltan Korda's The Four Feathers. And it isn't because of how good it is or who may be starring in it, but instead what it represents. The Four Feathers was one of those special British films released in the first half of the 20th century that celebrated Great Britain's colonial conquests. Films like Gunga Din or That Hamilton Woman which chronicled the valiant exploits of British officers fighting off dirty heathens to protect land that they stole in the first place. They completely ignore the facts that they wouldn't have thousands of British soldiers mercilessly gunned down in the African desert if they hadn't have previously done the exact same thing to the native women and children. And so we get to the insanity that The Four Feathers. I can summarize the entire plot in two sentences: a young British officer is sent white flowers (traditional signs of cowardice) by his fellow officers when he resigns his post the evening before being deployed to Africa to fight in the frivolous Mahdist War. Upon being called a coward, he whimpers a "nuh-uh," smuggles himself to Africa, and spends years impersonating an Arab so he can personally one-up the offending officers. That's the entire story. I wish I was joking. Ah...those were the days when life was simpler and much, MUCH stupider...But I digress. The Four Feathers is a tremendous film that feels like the grandfather of David Lean's epics, particularly Lawrence of Arabia. The cinematography is BIG, the natives are all white men in brown-face, and nobody bats an eye when hundreds of Arabs are mowed down (but God forbid if a British soldier must die!). It is, in a word, extraordinary. It is extraordinary in its scope, execution, and in the fact that people actually took this film seriously at one point in history.

7/10