Movie Maven

Do you know why I'm doing a post on the Errol Flynn version of Charge of the Light Brigade?

Because I just saw it in my History Through Film class.

And I just could not pass up that snappy title.

The Errol Flynn version of Charge of the Light Brigade is NOT about the Charge of the Light Brigade, a vastly mis-managed British military maneuver in which 600 cavalrymen rode at full speed into Russian cannon fire in some valley in Turkey during the Crimean War.

Into cannon fire.

You never, ever gallop horses headlong into cannon fire. I don't know anything about the military but I know that.

But none of this really matters, because the Errol Flynn version is not really about the charge of the light brigade (then again, neither really is the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem of the same name, but that's a different discussion). It's actually about imperialism and British superiority, made by a conflicted Hollywood. Most Americans in Hollywood felt about British imperialism the way most Americans in the rest of the country felt- that it was stupid and wrong (from a personal level) and that it was getting in the way of our manifest destiny (from an economic level.) The limeys were interrupting our trade routes and it was really starting to piss us off. But there was also a large minority of British producers, directors and actors hanging around at this time who felt differently and had quite a bit of sway. Remember also that this was 1930s America. As irritated as we might have been with the British for constantly mucking up other countries, deep in our social darwinist hearts we believed that people in, say, India needed looking after. They are, after all, so very unintelligent, so innocent and childlike, so thoroughly... ethnic. And British rule, we believed, was better than the third world running itself. Combine that with the natural fear of chaos and political panic of the Great Depression, and you've got the perfect makings for the development of the British Raj film. Where manly Brits like Errol Flynn's Geoffrey Vickers, Cary Grant's Archibald Cutter, and Gary Cooper's Alan McGregor battle demonic and brutal South Asian hordes and (surprise, surprise, Russians) to save the innocent natives and their own brethren.

Of course the Crimean War had absolutely nothing to do with India- it was actually Turkey where most of the fighting took place. But the producers probably figured, what the hell, they're all wearing turbans and talking gibberish so what's the difference? So Errol Flynn rides around India for most of the film, waging war against the evil Surat Khan, and seeking bloody vengeance upon him in Turkey after he slaughters a couple hundred women and children in some village. All of his men die in the aforementioned charge, but he gets to stab Khan so its a happy ending.

Very different from a stupid military maneuver, no?

I mention this film not just as an excuse to show my cleverness from blog titles, but also to demonstrate the importance of historical film in context. I love costume dramas, no matter how inaccurate- maybe even because of their inaccuracies. One can learn through these films not just about the time period being portrayed, but the time period in which the film itself was made. They're priceless artifacts of the 20th century- they're part of the reason we know so much about the collective American psyche of the 20th century.

A swashbuckling hero? Or symbol of conflicted feelings of colonial oppression? You decide.