THREE COMRADES (1938)

Fatalistic romance with pedigree: post-WWI set bestseller by ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT author Erich Maria Remarque; adaptation F. Scott Fitzgerald on his sole accredited Hollywood screenplay.  (Kudos to producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz for not only making this happen, but in allowing Fitzgerald’s rueful Lost Generation voice to register even as the script went thru various hands.)  With Robert Taylor, Robert Young & Franchot Tone (all in top form) as army vets, a German Band-of-Brothers in a garage/taxi start-up, their lives brightened by the frail beauty of tuberculosis-doomed Margaret Sullavan.  (Taylor, that most opaque of star actors, responding sensitively to a second TB case, after Garbo in CAMILLE/’36, once again helped by his yet to harden youthful beauty and by playing without his usual emotion concealing mustache.  Even rising to some powerful acting moments.)  Frank Borzage, a specialist directing these sort of sticky things, close to his silent film peak during an uneven run of films at M-G-M.*  Personalizing the volatile German ‘20s as Young moves into dangerous Communist circles amid the rising tide of right-wing street violence; Taylor happily lost in his affair with Sullavan though fully aware it’s Tone who’s truly her soul-mate.  Tone, extraordinary here (the Nick Carraway of your dreams), stealing the pic with this intriguing/unusual relationship.  (Claiming to be dead inside, he’s able to pull off a Christmastime revenge killing with a clean conscience as Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus plays on the soundtrack.)  Today, his loyal, valiant, sacrificing character would likely be closeted  gay, a bit in love with Taylor and sublimating via Sullavan.  (Is this intimated in the novel?  Is it read anymore?  ALL QUIET currently being filmed yet again, but is even that read today?  COMRADES popular enough at the time for its jacket to be used as background to the film's opening credits . . . and as our poster.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Though not specifically banned by the Hollywood Production Code, both TB and Communism all but unmentionable in big-budget M-G-M pics at the time.  Though audiences had little trouble inferring (or not) as they wished.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Largely at M-G-M from ‘37 to ‘43, Borzage was even better two years on, again with Sullavan and Robert Young, now joined by James Stewart, in THE MORTAL STORM/’40.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-mortal-storm-1940.html