|
James Whale's first film, and already a gentleman's approach to horror. Novices and veterans in Saint-Quentin, "six blooming eternal days" in the Great War, a British view of the trenches. The captain (Colin Clive) feels the strain and medicates it with alcohol, "without being doped with whiskey, I'd go mad with fright." The recently arrived lieutenant (David Manners) is his sweetheart's brother, rebuffed by the former school chum and consoled by a kindly officer (Ian Maclaren). The enemy awaits one hundred yards away but the drama unfolds in underground quarters, gags and songs and assorted rituals to paper over the dread of death and the longing of men. "If you get killed, you won't have to stand this hell any more." R.C. Sherriff's play transferred to the screen allows for a good deal of aural inventiveness amid the theatrical groupings—silence is what the newcomer first notices, "uncanny," dialogue is subsequently punctuated by the beeping of telegraph reports or the whistling of artillery shells. The cook (Charles K. Gerrard) does battle with a can of apricots, the affable gourmet (Billy Bevan) puts things in perspective: "I mean, after all, war is bad enough with pepper. But without pepper, it's blooming awful!" Strawberry jam and cockroach races, a few rhymes from Alice in Wonderland to soothe the rumble of explosions. Smoke blanches the barbed screen that is no man's land, meanwhile the callow corporal (Anthony Bushell) crumbles to pieces in the bunker, "beastly neuralgia" or fear by any other name. A concurrence with Hawks and Milestone, and an anticipation of Whale's preference for monsters in a soldier's crack about the filtered water ("I'd rather have the microbes, wouldn't you?"). With Robert Adair, Gil Perkins, and Werner Klingler. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |