Beau Ideal (1931)

Alpha have given us quite an acceptable 8/10 print of Beau Ideal (1931) which, partly thanks to Loretta Young, contrives to be one of the worst films ever made. Well, at least for the first 20 minutes or so. If you're watching this, fast-forward immediately after the credits past the scene with the chained prisoners (it's repeated later in the movie) and all the terrible stuff with a group of the worst child actors ever assembled, and all the tripe with Loretta Young (she is absolutely dreadful - and is photographed most unattractively to boot). Commence watching as soon as the Foreign Legion scenes appear. They may seem rather dull and over-familiar at first, but they do build up to a splendid all-action climax. Alas, director Herbert Brenon, a master of visual excitements, proves an almost total loss with his leads. Admittedly, given his ropey dialogue, Lester Vail is not too bad, but Ralph Forbes proves even more insufferable than Miss Young. And that's saying something!

... with an overall incoherent story to boot. The beginning really interested me, as I found myself dropped into a story in progress, with no real context, making me want to know the whys and the hows and the whos of the situation. You see half a dozen men at the bottom of an underground grain pit that is acting as a prison in the middle of the desert. They are wailing about how it has been six days since they had rations. There are two left alive, one looks at the one who has just died and says "Stout Fellow" then collapses himself. The one left conscious says, with great interest, "What did you say??" At this point the story goes back 15 years to England and shows the Geste brothers, Isobel Brandon, and Otis Madison as children. There really is no point to this part of the story other than to show the camaraderie among the four even at this early age. American Otis returns to England years later as an adult to propose to Isobel (Loretta Young). Funny how he'd take such a long journey believing that time had stood still for Isobel, but it is just the first of many odd things Otis does.Instead of tears of joy, Otis is greeted by just plain tears before he even gets to pop the question. Apparently the Geste brothers joined the French Foreign Legion because of an indiscretion one had committed but, heck, those Geste boys always do things together don't you know! When John's mortally wounded brother is attacked by a sadistic officer, John in turn kills the officer. The military court shows mercy since the officer struck one of his own men and sentence John to ten years in the French Foreign Legion Penal Battalion rather than hang him. Oh, and by the way, John and Isobel were engaged to be married prior to all of this and have tried and lost all appeals to the French government.Otis, being all dressed up with no place to go, decides to go to Africa, get John, and bring him back to Isobel. Now, remember, Otis doesn't know what John looks like anymore, apparently doesn't know what last name he is using - it is not Geste, and for that matter doesn't even know if there is more than one French Foreign Legion penal battalion on the continent of Africa. Then there would be the little matter of escaping from the French on the continent of Africa where their white skin would hardly make them blend into a crowd. James Bond would shake his head at the lack of prep work in this operation.Now I could take this outlandish plot if it wasn't for the poor overall technique. At some points there is pretty good dialogue, but for the most part this film lapses into pantomime-like silent film acting with the players actually saying the kinds of things that they would have said during the silent era when filming just to get in the mood - the kind of stuff the audience was never intended to hear lest they break out laughing. Towards the end it just gets so ridiculous. Maybe the problem here was that the director for this film also directed the silent version of "Beau Geste" in 1926 and just had a hard time moving the story ahead in time. Between the odd plot, the silent film acting coupled with a multitude of title cards, and the fact that top billed Loretta Young is only on screen between five and ten minutes, I'd recommend you pass on this one unless you are just interested in film history.

The third film in the trilogy, this one may seem slow to viewers who haven't been able to watch the previous two (Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur). This story wraps up all the loose ends of the other two and throws in some new and interesting twists as well. The film follows the "Geste" saga from the perspective of two other characters originally introduced in Beau Geste and again featured in Beau Sabreur. Early black and white, kind of rough around the edges by today's standards but still well worth watching.

This needless sequel to 1926's "Beau Geste" suffers from that stiff, stagey quality common in early "talkies." The slightly-muffled nature of its sound recording merely emphasizes the lifeless quality of its dialog - perhaps its most dated feature. There are some good desert-scapes showing lines of Legionnaires crossing the Sahara, and the final reel has a rousing, if politically-incorrect, assault by rebellious tribesmen, but in general, "Beau Ideal" is little more than a mild curiosity for film historians. Loretta Young gets prime billing but has only a modest part.