"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.
"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.
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