Too much of everything

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's impossible to make a bad film out of this story, and that is one of the reasons it has been filmed so many times. Since each version is good in its own way, it's also interesting to compare them with each other. The 1939 version is still the most spectacular and impressing but also the most superficial. The Beau Bridges version as Harry Fasversham is the weakest one, but for Robert Powell as Jack Durrance, who is always the most interesting character, and all depends on how he is acted. In this version Durrance is played by Laurence Harvey, who is always unmatchable. He is therefore the main attraction here, and he certainly makes the whole film interesting, no matter what advantages to it you find in the other versions. Here you also find a deeper pathos than in the other versions, and the scenery from the Nile transcends all the others.The most interesting detail is the conscience issue. Harry Faversham turns a conscientious objector (20 years before the first world war) and gets labelled as a coward by his soldier friends. He feels they are right in their way and that he has to prove them wrong, whereupon he sets out on the most impossible thinkable enterprise, masking himself as a mute Arab slave to reach his friends in the Sudan to save their lives from certain death when necessary. But he can't save Durrance from his blindness.His only friend at home, Dr. Sutton (Geoffrey Keen) plays an important role here and makes a memorable character. All the finest and most sensitive scenes are with him and Laurence Harvey. This version also gives the finest music of the four, by Benjamin Frankel. Also Christopher Lee has a small part, and James Robertson Justice adds to the flamboyance.It's a remake of the 1939 version but better, but the best version is the so far latest one: the Shekhar Kapur version of 2002 with Heath Ledger, and Wes Bentley as Jack Durrance.

Being something of a pacifist, Harry Faversham (Anthony Steele) has the misfortune to be born into a staunchly military family with all the expectations of an overbearing father (Michael Hordern) weighing down on his shoulders. Harry toes the line to please his dad, but when the old boy pops his clogs, he swiftly resigns his commission. As a consequence, he receives a white feather (the symbol of cowardice) from each of his best friends (Laurence Harvey, Ronald Lewis, and an out-of-place Ian Carmichael) on the eve of their departure to war in the Sudan. Harry awards himself a symbolic feather on behalf of his fiancée (Mary Ure) whose disappointment is clear. Harry determines to make his former friends take back their feathers, which is the signal for much derring-do to begin (hurrah!).The tale of the four feathers is the epitome of the schoolboy adventure yarn with heroic soldiers blinded in battle, heroic soldiers captured by the fuzzie-wuzzies (not nice, I can tell you!), heroic cowards braving forehead-branding and boot polish to go deep under cover in darkest Africa, and pompous old boors endlessly recounting their role in the battle of Balaclava back in the Crimean. It should really be boredom-proof, but the sad truth is that this version comes perilously close to inducing that state at times. The film is practically a word-for-word remake of the 1939 version – and even makes scandalously wholesale use of the earlier version's battle scenes – which means it probably came across as a bit staid back in 1955, but looks positively creaky today.Anthony Steel isn't a particularly convincing hero: at thirty-five he's playing a twenty-five year old who somehow looks forty-five, but the problem is more in the lack of sympathy Steel creates for his character. His Harry Faversham is the sort that sits in the corner and speaks when he's spoken too, and is therefore a little too bland to be a dashing hero, despite his acts of heroism. And exactly what sort of reaction did he expect to receive when he resigned his commission? Doesn't trotting off to the desert to regain his honour in the eyes of his friends and fiancée simply negate the strength of character required to resign in the first place? A young Laurence Harvey fares better as Faversham's upper-crust chum who suffers sun blindness when hiding from the fuzzies, and would arguably have been better suited to the leading man role. Ronald Lewis has practically nothing to do, while Ian Carmichael, on the cusp of his comedy career, comes off as a plummy-voiced twit.The film isn't awful by any standards, but it really could have benefited from fifteen minutes being pruned from its running time, and a little more fire in young Faversham's belly.

Harry Faversham,the Public School Man's Public School Man,together with his whinnying cronies,is the future of his regiment.Handsome,dashing,heavy with hair oil and gleaming of teeth he seems destined to die futilely in battle in the corner of some foreign field that will remain forever England or at least until it's returned to its rightful owners a few years down the line when his remains will be ploughed up and thrown to one side. But HF is not a happy soldier,he only signed on to please his father,and once engaged to the daughter of a retired General he resigns his commission.At the very least he is guilty of not very good timing as his regiment is leaving at dawn for Africa and the assumption of his contemporaries and superiors is that he lacks intestinal fortitude. Anxious to prove his courage(I'm a bit hazy on this point.If he was that anxious to prove his courage it would have been easier to stay in the army)he makes his way to the Sudan (walked,hitch - hiked?I think we should be told)he proceeds to save the lives of his former chums who are undoubtedly the worst officers ever to put on a uniform. They may have ruled the roost at Eton or wherever,but they should have never been let out of their tent on their own. Cue an appalling performance by Mr L Harvey who wanders off into the desert on his own presumably to top up his tan and promptly ends up blinded by the sun.Did you miss that bit at Sandhurst Larry? Just as he is about to blow his brains out(I seriously doubt if he's that good a shot) HF pops up and wrestles the gun from his fingers. Disguised as a Dervish with speaking difficulties (don't ask - it would take too long)he eventually rescues all his old pals from fates worse than death and is reunited with his estranged fiancée.Floreat Etona. My grandfather as a boy read a book called "With Kitchener in The Sudan" which was full of nonsense like this.It inspired him and thousands like him to volunteer for the colours in 1914.He was lucky and worked as a medic on a troopship,but an awful lot of aspiring Harry Favershams were slaughtered wholesale,choked by gas,drowned in the mud or simply blown to bits on bloody battlefields. I can only assume this film was meant to be taken seriously even though by 1955 the Empire it celebrates was long dead.The term "Fuzzy - Wuzzy" was beginning to be frowned upon and only the Guards and Cavalry regiments had many officers like messrs Harvey and Steele. I don't profess to know what purpose was served by the making of "Storm on the Nile".At home the Angry Young Men were stirring,former colonies were ridding themselves of those they saw as their oppressors,the Cold War was under way.Bad times were just around the corner.Perhaps it was a plea for the return of war as a game for Gentlemen. Mr L. Harvey in a rather bizarre scene gets to read a speech by Caliban in braille and proves - if further proof apart from his "Romeo"was needed - that he was one of the biggest hams ever to grace the British Cinema.Mr A.Steele's limitations are cruelly exposed in even such a one - dimensional part as Faversham.The lovely Miss M.Ure is wasted as his fiancée.Only Sir Lancelot Spratt - sorry,Mr.J.Robertson Justice - is worth watching as her father,although his beard greys at rather an alarming rate. You can see the birth pangs of "Zulu" in "Storm on the Nile".If you can truly and honestly say you thought "Zulu" was a great film rather than a film about a great military action then you may find "Storm on the Nile" acceptable.If not,next time it comes on TV pop out to your favourite Indian restaurant and think about how the world has changed whilst drinking your Cobra" and waiting for your takeaway.

This is a remake of the classic 1930' s movie The Four Feathers ,with directorial chores being split between Terence Young ( soon to be a James Bond helmsman) and Zoltan Korda ,whose brother Alexander produced the earlier version The movie is faithful both to the earlier picture and the source novel by A E W Mason .It tells how Harry Faversham is unjustly accused of cowardice when resigning his commission in the British army on the eve of the war in the Sudan against the Mahdi (For a fuller cinema treatment of the conflict see the Heston -Olivier picture "Khartoum ") 3 of his friends and his fiancée hand him white feathers ,emblematic of cowardice .Faversham disappears from London society and travels to Africa and disguises himself as a native ,in which role he comes to the aid of one of his accusers Their is a slightly cheapskate air about the production whose battle scenes are largely taken from footage shot for the earlier movie .The acting is pretty wooden -espaecially from Anthony as Faversham and Laurence Harvey as his chief accuser .The peppy cameo from James Robertson Justice as a crusty old general adds needed vigour to the acting department as does a pre Hammer movies Christopher Lee as a native tribesman The movie is not downright bad but it lacks the brio and pace that would have lifted it a notch or two higher and overall is competent but slightly plodding