One of my all time favorites.

Boring

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

In some circles this is infamous as the only movie on which Scott Fitzgerald got a screen credit albeit shared with Frank who-he Paramore though Fitzgerald's name was in slightly bigger type. On the other hand the producer credit went to Joe Manckowicz and he has been accused of re-writing our Scott. Whatever, it's all a long time ago and what remains is a wonderful valentine to friendship with four principals whom it is impossible to visualize played by other actors. Even when it veers toward the twee and the schmaltz is almost impossible not to succumb to its charm and nostalgia. Margaret Sullavan was a delight in everything she did and always came across as June Allyson with a steel core. Many people here have awarded the acting honours to Franchot Tone and it's difficult to disagree but having said that the two Roberts, Taylor and Young complement both Tone and each other to a fare-thee-well. In short this is a film I can watch time and time again.

One of the best 10 films of 1938 (according to The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made), and one which I enjoyed thoroughly when I saw it on TCM.Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, and Robert Young are the three men who all love Margaret Sullavan (who received her only Oscar nomination) in their own way. Guy Kibbee and Monty Woolley also play roles in this essential drama, as do Henry Hull and Charley Grapewin (who both play doctors; George Zucco also plays one, though he's uncredited). Directed by Frank Borzage, the Erich Maria Remarque novel was adapted by Edward Paramore Jr. and F. Scott Fitzgerald (his only screen writing credit).The three leads (Taylor, Tone, and Young) were soldiers for Germany in World War I and, now that it's over, they become auto mechanics. While out driving their car, they meet Sullavan, who's with Lionel Atwill. Taylor begins dating Sullavan, dining at Kibbee's establishment. But Sullavan is ill, and later needs help from a doctor at a sanitarium (Woolley). All of the drama occurs with a backdrop of an unsettled post war environment.

"Three Comrades" was one of the few films on which F. Scott Fitzgerald got a writing credit. He co-wrote it with Edward E Paramore Jr from a novel by Erich Maria Remarque who wrote "All Quiet on the Western Front" and it's a beautiful job of work. It's set in Germany after the First World War, (you'll have no trouble accepting the American cast as Germans), and is about three friends, (Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young), and their relationship with a frivolous, sophisticated and dying girl. She's played magnificently by Margaret Sullavan, (she won the New York Film Critic's prize for Best Actress), and she's the lynchpin of this Frank Borzage classic which is deeply romantic and highly intelligent at the same time. It's a love story that doesn't shy away from the political situation pertaining in Germany at the time without ever being preachy. Indeed, it's one of the great films about friendship and it's very easy to accept Taylor, Tone and Young as men who really care for one another, (Tone is superb and even Taylor and Young don't let the side down), but this is Sullavan's movie. It's a luminous performance, perhaps her finest. Her disappearance from the movies and tragically early death was one of the cinema's greatest losses.

Kind of interesting, a story of three young men (Robert Taylor, Robert Young, and Franchot Tone) who are trying to make a living in bleak 1920s Germany after having fought a losing war.The men are close friends and each tries to find some means of self expression. Taylor is a self-conscious working-class guy with no particular skills, and he drinks too much. Young is an idealist who becomes involved in left-wing politics. Tone is an auto mechanic and semi-engineer. Together they start a small business, an auto repair shop and taxi service (with one taxi).Into their world comes Margaret Sullavan, an impoverished aristocrat who falls for Taylor, overcomes his shyness by her brashness, and marries him. She has reason to hurry. She's dying of tuberculosis.In contrast to what might happen in real life, she doesn't immediately get rid of hubby's friends. Instead, as in a Howard Hawks movie, she becomes a member of the group. The men all love her in their different ways, as they do each other.On the surface it's just a romantic drama in a studio-bound Germany but the story, if not gripping, is involving. I was struck by some of the lines, though I had no idea F. Scott Fitzgerald was involved in writing them. Taylor is searching about for some way to apologize to Sullavan for some imagined gaffe. Young advises: "Bring her flowers. Flowers cover everything, even graves." (The three men are haunted by the war and the memory of friends they lost.) This is a small thing, not a flight of poetry, but the script is sprinkled with these small things. Fitzgerald might not have had anything to do with lines like that, but I doubt that Remarque did either. I read the novel in German years ago and remember the prose as far more naturalistic and less romantic than this.It's a tragic story and a bit of a downer but it's well worth catching. Probably endorsed by the Pooh Bas because of the commercial success of Eric Maria Remarque's earlier novel/movie, "All Quiet on the Western Front." I don't know why a guy named Kramer had to go and change his name to the more pretentious Remarque, but that's his business. Good flick.