The Four Feathers

This is one of the all-time great adventure films, done on a grand scale, in Technicolor. It has a cast of thousands, and they are employed to great effect in the huge desert battle scenes. Whatever you do, do not, do not take a look at the horrible 2002 remake. It will leave a bad taste in your mouth for months.

That said, I have to mention that almost all of these great classic adventures from the British Age of Empire have no problem with the assumption that it was somehow a British right to enter a new land and subjugate the native people with their superior weapons and tactics. Here the Dervishes and “Fuzzy-wuzzies” have no tactics other than to ride en masse into British rifles, shouting loudly. You can see how a vastly outnumbered British Army was able to run roughshod over much of the globe until finally the people who actually lived there learned how to drive the bastards out. So you have to view these movies with a certain historical perspective, one that I’m finding harder and harder to achieve. Because, let’s face it, the British were the bad guys here. But what a grand adventure it is!