October 15, 2002

FOUR FEATHERS

PART I: True or False

YALE KRAMER

The recently released version of "Four Feathers," expensively packaged and executed with a cast of of wooden, juvenile actors stirred memories of my boyhood. It made me long to see again what I remembered in 1939, when I was ten, as a grand old spectacular adventure. At that time I didn't care who produced or directed it, or who wrote it, or whether it was based on a novel or not. Nor was I, in all probability, even aware of the subtler aspects of characters' motivation or plot development. To me at that time it was a rousing story in which the handsome good guys won and the cruel bad guys, in their funny hats and dresses, lost. The fact that the hero, Harry Fevasham, won the beautiful girl with a chaste kiss at the end was more or less irrelevant to me, some silly ritual that I had learned to accept as part of the price you had to pay, in addition to the 10 cent admission price, for an exciting Saturday afternoon adventure film.

The current version--without a single English man or woman playing a major role--I found, had been transformed into a confused hodge-podge of anti-British, anti-colonial moralizing; a sermon in multicultural cliches. More important, it bears little or no relation to either the spirit or point of the novel on which it purports to be based. And what is worse is that the anti-Western propaganda is, like all propaganda, based on lies and distortions. (It reminded me, in subtler form, of the anti-semitic film that the Nazis produced called "The Eternal Jew" in which Jews are depicted as disgusting, base creatures akin to rodents.) There are many literary and historical vehicles that are available for film adaptation that might allow for a depiction of the complex truths about British colonialism--but "Four Feathers" is not one of them. Surely the producers, director, and writers wanted it both ways--to get their pseudo-moral/political rocks off and at the same time have a big slice of the pie by trying to sell the movie as a rousing adventure-romance like the 1939 version was. They will no doubt die painful deaths and be consigned to the eleventh circle of hell where motion picture movers and shakers spend an eternity making deals that never come to fruition.

The current version of "Four Feathers" is actually its seventh incarnation. The first in 1915 and the second in 1921 were, of course, silent. The third, in 1929, had sound effects and music, but no spoken dialogue. None of these were more than primitive versions of the story and are antiques, unavailable for current viewing. The 1939 version was next and still remains the best. Not a great film, but a grand one. (This was followed, in 1955, by a degraded version of the last one with the same script but a different cast and title--"Storm over the Nile"-- and produced to exploit the then new "wide-screen" format (Cinemascope). Then, in 1977, still further down on the food chain, came a "made for TV" version.)

Although much simplified and condensed, the 1939 version, produced by that great Hungerian monger of British myth, Alexander Korda, was close in spirit to the original novel. It tells the story of Harry Feversham, his close friend and fellow officer in the British army, Jack Durrance, and the beautiful young woman they both love, Ethne Willoughby. She, tender hearted and caring, but faithful to the values of her father, a retired general in the army, holds Durrance in high regard as a friend, but has given her heart to Harry Fevesham.

Harry is a complicated young man. While his brother officers enjoy drinking and the rough and tumble of sports and army life, Harry enjoys poetry and music--definitely a bit of a softy underneath that handsome Lieutenant's uniform. He is product of both his parents: on the one side he is the heir of a long tradition of military heroes and the only son of a courageous but overbearing father who expects him to carry on the tradition; his mother, wholly different from his father, "remarkable for the refinement of her intellect as for the beauty of her person." Harry is closer to his mother, perhaps too close. She dies during his childhood, all through which he has been haunted by fears of battle and cowardice. All of this is only hinted at in the movie, but it gives a clue to his actions after he becomes engaged to Ethne. Soon after the announcement of his engagement and right after he hears that his regiment is off to the wars in Sudan to rescue General Gordon in Khartoum he has a crisis of courage and in an act he comes to regret, resigns his commision and leaves the army. When his brother officers hear this, three of them send him a white feather--an accusation of cowardice--and when Ethne hears of this she is astonished and humiliated and adds a fourth feather.

Harry becomes a social pariah and spends the rest of the movie trying to redeem himself by going to the Sudan and proving his own courage by rescuing Durrance and the other two officers who had sent him the white feathers. Through much guile and suffering he manages to do this, but, alas he appears to have lost his chances with Ethne. Durrance has returned to England blind and Ethne feels out of a sense of duty that she must marry him. But when Harry returns and redeems himself in Ethne's eyes Durrance sacrifices his love of Ethne and bows out of the picture. A sad but happy ending.

The novel on which these seven films have been based was written in 1902 by A.E.W. Mason and has, since then, never been out of print. Mason was born in London in 1865 and raised in a middle-class family. His father was an accountant and his mother a homemaker. He graduated from Oxford in 1888 and became an actor. While in the theatre he began to write plays and eventually turned to writing fiction. He became a gifted writer of adventure and detective novels. His most famous novel and the one that has stood the test of time is "Four Feathers." Having achieved fame and fortune by the time he was 38, he did not stop there. A tremendously energetic man, he was a sportsman, loved mountain climbing, hunting, and riding. An entertaining social companion and a great raconteur, he was socially in demand wherever he was known. He had a successful career in politics as a Member of Parliament, and during World War I served as an infantry officer until he became a spy for the newly established Secret Service. In 1937 he was offered a knighthood but, perhaps characteristically, turned it down. He died in 1948 after living to see "Four Feathers" filmed four times.

The questions remain: Why has this novel prevailed for over a hundred years despite the fact that it is not thought to be a very distinguished literary work? What is there about it that continues to capture the popular imagination? Is there any truth value at all in the current version?

NEXT WEEK

FOUR FEATHERS PART II: IT'S HARD TO BE A MAN