Beau Geste (1939)

When a valuable diamond is stolen, the shadow of its theft falls on three brothers (Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston)). To escape the suspicion, the three join the French Foreign Legion. Based on the novel by Percival Christopher Wren (previously made in 1926 with Ronald Colman) and directed by William A. Wellman. This piece of silly nonsense is inexplicably admired in certain quarters. It's well directed, I'll give it that. Wellman stages some impressive battle scenes and there's a fine Alfred Newman score but when you despise the "hero" (Cooper) and root for the sadistic villain (Brian Donlevy in an Oscar nominated performance), something's not right. The film is under two hours but it felt like three and I did something I almost never do when watching a film ... I hit the fast forward button several times. I don't mean to be too harsh to it because I enjoyed some of the earlier portions of the movie but it gets increasingly contrived as it moves forward and at 38, Cooper was a bit mature to play the boyish Brit (fortunately he doesn't bother with an English accent, the mind reels). With Susan Hayward, Donald O'Connor, Broderick Crawford, Albert Dekker, J. Carrol Naish and James Stephenson.