Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 18-April-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)

With flags waving and hooves flying, The Charge of the Light Brigade spins a yarn from the pages of history about a troop of British lancers in 1850s Asia. Early on, their leader (Errol Flynn) saves the life of a shifty-eyed emir (C. Henry Gordon) somewhere in the vicinity of Afghanistan. Despite the goodwill that generates, the emir soon allies himself with the Russians to become an enemy of Queen Victoria. With war brewing in the Crimea the British try to keep peace in the east, but their cool is shattered when the emir seizes one of their strongholds and massacres its inhabitants, most of them women and children. Inflamed by outrage and the desire for revenge, Flynn and his men follow the villain to the Black Sea where he has taken refuge with the Russian army. In a battle immortalized by Lord Tennyson, whose poem inspired this movie, the 600 men of the Light Brigade charge the foe despite the threat of cannon and the fact that they are hopelessly outnumbered. It is a noble sacrifice, a crescendo of masculine pride, and an act of defiance against both the enemy and the notion of fear.

It is also complete hogwash. While such a charge did occur, it was quickly recognized as an exemplar of poor leadership and miscommunication, the popularity of Tennyson's poem notwithstanding. But this does not diminish the movie's stirring effect. The Charge of the Light Brigade stands out among the generally entertaining group of pictures that deal with England's heroes of the raj (and points between), including Gunga Din and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. The California backdrop is convincingly exotic and the battle scenes rival anything seen today for thundering spectacle. The horror of the massacre adds weight to what initially appears to be a light adventure-romance and sets the stage for the memorable finale. As for the cast, the army commanders' boots are filled by familiar old pros Henry Stephenson, Donald Crisp, and Nigel Bruce (best known as Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes), and Flynn never looked more soberly dashing. Resplendent in an array of regalia, he exudes more than enough gentlemanly grandeur to weather a goopy love triangle involving his fiancée (Olivia De Havilland) and brother (Patric Knowles) and to make a viewer forget that his decision to sound the charge was both gross insubordination and the near equivalent to murder, since he carried 599 other men with him into the "Valley of Death." (His character is fictitious, so we need not wonder how his decision was regarded in real life.)

History has its instructive uses, to be sure, but it also provides a canvas on which to envision ideals and golden ages to which human hearts aspire. This movie is a good example of how a past event can induce fantasies about a time and place where men were shiny-boot-wearing, "I say, old boy"-spouting, homeland- and honor-bound men.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.