Four feathers (1939)

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Movie
German title Four feathers
Original title The Four Feathers
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1939
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Zoltan Korda
script RC sheriff
production Alexander Korda
music Miklós Rózsa
camera Georges Périnal ,
Osmond Borradaile
cut Henry Cornelius
occupation
synchronization

Four Feathers (original title: The Four Feathers ) is a British adventure film , directed by Zoltan Korda in 1939 based on the novel of the same name by AEW Mason . The first performance in Germany took place on March 24, 1951.

action

Sudanese rebels led by Khalifa Abdullah kill British General Charles George Gordon . A military expedition to support the general comes too late. Ten years later in England: shortly before his regiment embarked for Sudan, the young officer Faversham resigned from his command. His friends, Captain Durrance, Lieutenant Willoughby, and Lieutenant Burroughs, are appalled by Faversham's apparent cowardice. They each send him a white feather as a sign of their disgust. His fiancée Ethne Durrance also says nothing in his defense, but in turn hands him another pen.

In the Mahdi uprising , Durrance's unity is wiped out. Durrance remains badly wounded on the battlefield, Burroughs and Willoughby are taken prisoner. Durrance is delirious and sun-blind, but a mute native takes him to a British fort. The man puts something in a letter to Ethne Durrance that the captain carries with him. Some soldiers see this and believe in a robbery. You're chasing the man out of the fort.

The army releases the blind Durrance, who returns to England. Ethne takes care of him. One day he tells Ethne about his rescue and pulls out the letter. A white quill falls from the letter - the savior was Faversham. Nobody has the heart to tell Durrance that.

Burroughs and Willoughby are in a dungeon in Khartoum. They are slipped a file by the disguised Faversham, but he is caught and also imprisoned. On the day of the Battle of Omdurman , Faversham is able to organize an escape of prisoners amid the turmoil of the fighting. The prisoners end up in the arsenal and repel the Sudanese warriors. This will allow the British to win the battle. When Durrance receives news of the battle and also of Faversham's actions, he identifies him as his savior. He then told Ethne that he had to go to Germany to heal his eyesight. At the same time he sends his congratulations to Faversham.

Faversham returns to London as a hero. Ethne asks him which heroic play he has in mind so that she can get her white feather back from him. Faversham goes to see her father, General Burroughs, who is writing a war novel about the Battle of Balaklava . He frees the general's story from all embellishments, whereupon the general confesses that he cannot tell this story again.

background

  • The film was shot on location in Sudan.
  • Producer Alexander Korda is the brother of director Zoltan Korda. The third brother Vincent Korda (Oscar 1942 as art director) worked as a production designer, but only his work as a set designer was mentioned in the opening credits.
  • In collaboration with Terence Young Zoltan Korda 1955 turned a remake of this film, entitled Storm Over the Nile ( Storm Over the Nile ) with Anthony Steel and Laurence Harvey . A number of the film's recordings from 1939 were reused.
  • Arthur Wimperis (Oscar 1943), who wrote additional dialogues for the screenplay, was also not mentioned in the credits.
  • Well-known collaborators were: composer Miklos Rózsa (Oscars 1946, 1948 and 1960); Cameraman Georges Périnal (Oscar 1941); Special effects specialist Peter Ellenshaw (Oscar 1965); Camera technician Jack Cardiff (Oscar 1948, Golden Globes 1948, 1961), unnamed in the credits; Camera technician Robert Krasker (Oscar 1951), also anonymous; Camera assistant Geoffrey Unsworth (Oscars 1973, 1981), also anonymous when he first worked on a motion picture; the head of the editing department William Hornbeck (Oscar 1952).
  • The film's military and technical advisers were Captain Donald Anderson and Lieutenant Colonel Stirling.

Historical background

  • Charles George Gordon (1833-1885) was a British major general who was also known as China Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum. He took part in the 2nd Opium War in China in 1859/60 . In 1873 he became governor of Equatoria in Sudan, in 1877 of the Turkish-Egyptian Sudan. In 1881 there was the Mahdi uprising in which the Sudanese wanted to drive the British and Egyptians out of their country. On January 26, 1885, the rebels stormed Khartoum and killed Gordon. As described in the film, the military expedition to provide support arrived too late, namely by two days. The 1966 film Khartoum by Basil Dearden tells the story of Gordon as governor in Sudan. He is portrayed in this film by Charlton Heston . Richardson plays the British Prime Minister in this film.
  • The Mahdi Uprising was a colonial war in Sudan that ran from 1881 to 1899. The political leader Muhammad Ahmad called himself Mahdi , one of the last chosen leaders of the faithful by Allah in Islam . Ahmad's goal was the secession from Egypt and the end of colonization by the British. The uprising was suppressed after Ahmad's death in 1885, but Egypt lost contact with Eritrea and Somaliland . Ethiopia and Eritrea became Italian colonies, Somaliland became a British colony, and the French occupied Djibouti .
  • The Battle of Omdurman took place on September 2, 1898 during the Mahdi uprising in Sudan. Omdurman, today a suburb of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, had been the headquarters of the self-proclaimed Mahdi since 1884 . After that it was the capital of Khalifa Abdullah. Over 25,000 soldiers of the Empire (8,200 British, approx. 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptians) met 52,000 Sudanese rebels 11 km north of Omdurman. The battle, seen as a turning point in military history because of the last frontal cavalry attack, is seen as the victory of the Empire and the end of the uprising. There were 430 losses on the Empire's side, 49 of them dead. The rebels had nearly 20,000 dead and wounded. The city of Khartoum was destroyed in the fighting and later rebuilt by the British.

synchronization

The German dubbing was created in 1950 by Mars Film Synchron GmbH Berlin . The dialogue book was written by Georg Rothkegel , who also directed the dubbing.

role actor Voice actor
Harry Faversham John Clements Ernst Wilhelm Borchert
Cpt. Durrance Ralph Richardson Siegmar Schneider
Karaga Pasha Amid Taftazani Erich Dunskus
Peter Donald Gray Klaus Schwarzkopf
Lt. Willoughby Jack Allen Kurt Weitkamp
General Burroughs C. Aubrey Smith Ernst Dernburg
Edna Burroughs June Duprez Bettina Schön
General Faversham Allan Jeayes Alfred Haase
Faversham as a child Clive Baxter Michael Guenther
Dr. Sutton Frederick Culley Ernst Stahl
Sgt. Brown Norman Pierce Walter Altenkirch

Reviews

"Elaborately staged adventure film with crowd scenes in the turmoil of battle. The distant glorification of a soldier's ethos seems rather naive today. "

- Lexicon of international film

"The lavishly staged film bows to a soldier-like ethos that seems rather naive these days."

- 6000 films (1963)

Awards

Oscar nomination 1940 in the category:

Other film adaptations of the novel by AEW Mason

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vier Federn (GBR) (1939) in Arne Kaul's synchronous database ; Retrieved August 23, 2010
  2. ↑ cf. Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  3. ↑ 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 89