Charge Of The Light Brigade

Charge Of The Light Brigade
1936 - Warner Brothers
Directed By Michael Curtiz



SYNOPSIS

Years after British Major Vickers (Errol Flynn) saves the life of Indian leader Surat Khan (C. Henry Gordon,) Khan massacres the town where Vickers' regiment is based (but away on maneuvers.) Khan later allies himself with the Russians. War later breaks out between Britain and Russia. Vickers defies orders and leads his regiment into battle to get revenge on Khan. Vickers also orders his brother (Patric Knowles) away from the battlefield so he can be with the woman he loves (Olivia de Havilland.)



MY THOUGHTS

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's classic poem comes to vivid life, but it takes way too long to get there.

Charge Of The Light Brigade is not historically accurate at all, but we're told this upfront.

Everything leading up to the stunning conclusion is a bunch of fluff.

There's an entire segment of the film where we follow Errol Flynn on a mission to acquire horses. This adds little to nothing to the film except several minutes of screen time.

The love triangle aspect of the story is woefully weak. It takes up so little time in the story, it seems tacked-on at the last minute in order to please some female viewers. It's done so poorly, it pleases no one. The scenes slow the film down to a snail's crawl.
Knowles and de Havilland's characters are like all the characters in the film.... two-dimensional. We know he loves de Havilland and he's in the military and has a brother. She's the daughter of a colonel engaged to Errol Flynn and she loves Knowles. This is all we know of them. We are as emotionally invested in them as a passing couple on a street.
This was the second of the nine parings of Warner Brothers top romantic team of Flynn and de Havilland, though they have little romance here.

Errol Flynn is heroic (as usual) as the lead and also does many of his own stunts. Vickers is charismatic and in the end noble. Flynn is able to take this two-dimensional character and work with it and flesh it out. If he was unable to do this, it would have sunk the film and his fledgling Hollywood career.

The film features plenty of beautiful outdoor cinematography... various locations all over California standing in perfectly for India.

The highlight of the film is the titular charge. The combination of quick editing, great cinematography (with moving cameras,) a great musical score (Max Steiner scores again) and very violent imagery makes for quite a spectacle.
The screen is filled with hundreds of soldiers and horses, guns and cannons blazing. It's hard to believe in this day and age to realize, this is not CGI, everything here is real.... and it's spectacular.

A stuntman and more than 200 horses were killed during the making of the film and you can easily see why. The horses fall hard left and right during the battle (mostly due to trip wires.) They were hurt so badly they were put down. Following the film, Congress and the ASPCA stepped in to help protect animals used in films.

The stupendous close of the film certainly makes up for the dull first hour and a half.