Three Comrades (1938)

Pacifist Drama (spoiler). - Three Comrades review by Steve

Handsome, Hollywood adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel about Germany after WWI, and the pacifism which gives way to poverty and the emergence of the Nazis. Three young men return from the western front to build a new country but find themselves swept up in the rising tide of a new tyranny. Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young have a palpable rapport as the friends.

Taylor falls for a penniless aristocrat, played by Margaret Sullavan. Sullavan has a strong screen presence; slim, poised, husky and cool. She looks elegant in a beret. Frank Borzage turns their relationship into the ethereal hyper-romance which was his speciality. The normally lightweight Franchot Tone brings gravitas in support, in perhaps his best performance.

The novel was adapted by F. Scott Fitzgerald, his only screenwriting credit. Sullavan complained she couldn't speak his dialogue and the script was rewritten by the producer, Joe Mankiewicz. These difficulties are not apparent; the writing is poetic and has depth. There is some editorialising. The Hollywood censors wanted the riots to be led by communists rather than the fascists, but Borzage held firm!

Still the message is politically vague given it was 1938. It's a pacifist story set in a studio's idea of middle Europe. Today the film works best as a lyrical romance; a Borzage film, full of atmosphere and suffering. Sullavan's death in a sanitarium is protracted but it gives the film its mystical weight. It's certainly a weepie, but a relatively sophisticated one.