Three Comrades (1938)

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

Handsome 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 rebuild the nation but find themselves swept up in the rising tide of a new tyranny. Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young share a palpable rapport as the friends.

Taylor falls for a penniless aristocrat played by Margaret Sullavan. She has a strong screen presence; slim, poised, husky and cool. And 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, with perhaps his best performance.

This has the only screenwriting credit of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sullavan complained she couldn't speak his dialogue so it was rewritten by the producer, Joe Mankiewicz. These difficulties are not apparent; the script has poetry and depth. There is some editorialising. The censors wanted the bad guys to be communists, not fascists! But Borzage held firm!

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