Beau Geste

A relief column arrives at a Foreign Legion fort in the desert and sees sentries at the walls. Closer up, it turns out they are all dead and have been propped into position. The film then goes back: three brothers growing up in England, a missing jewel, and all three confessing to the theft and running from home. The subject is not adventure but how the brothers protect each other. Each of them claims the same theft and none says the others are innocent; that stubborn silence is why they end up in the Legion. The form splits in two: childhood in England and the siege in the desert. In the second part the interior of the fort is nearly the only location and the tension comes from Sergeant Markoff's cruelty. The source is P. C. Wren's novel; the same story had been filmed in the silent era. The opening image of the dead sentries is counted among the most cited openings in cinema. Brian Donlevy's Markoff was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar. William A. Wellman directs. Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston play the brothers. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Hollywood adventure and confined-space tension. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the presentation of a colonial army troubling; the film depicts the Legion and its Arab characters with the eye of its period.