I just rewatched The Four Feathers (1939) on TCM. My original thoughts still apply, although this time around I found it even more aggravating to watch a film deconstruct imperialism while still casting its non-white roles with brownface.¹ On the other hand, having spent most of my first viewing studying John Clements, this time I could notice Ralph Richardson.

The scene in which Captain Durrance goes sun-blind is fascinating because it's factually unbelievable—losing your khaki cork helmet for five minutes in the North African sun is not likely to smite a person down with heatstroke on the spot, especially if he's been coping fine with wearing way too much uniform in way too hot a climate until then. But it's an incredible piece of physical acting. Richardson makes you believe that the noon-white sun is a bodily weight on him, staggering, insupportable, sudden as a gong; he has thirty annoyed, overheated seconds peering off the edge of the rocks for his fallen helmet and then his vision wavers like blacktop mirage and his knees buckle; stiff-upper-lip soldier that he is, his face is suddenly childlike with dread, knowing how little time he has. He has to squint to see anything through his field glasses and hold himself against the boulders to stay on his feet; it's as if he's lost oxygen. Climbing down to retrieve his helmet, he's half-falling all the way. When he finally loses consciousness, a yard from his helmet with its saving linen burnoose, he trips and sprawls as shockingly as if something in his nervous system has just shorted out. Waking in his tent, thinking it's night when it's late afternoon, he strikes match after match before his eyes, burning his fingers, holding the tiny flames so close to his face they reflect in his pupils (he must feel the heat), glassily frantic as a nightmare. And then he has to go out and face his men. There isn't a second of stoicism in the performance, except when Durrance is putting on a brisk brave business-as-usual for the company who mustn't know that their commander can't see a thing when they're facing the Khalifa's army in the morning. (He won't look any of them in the face, in case they notice his eyes aren't tracking.) Crisply dismissing his second-in-command at the end of the day, he goes to turn in—and nearly walks into the tent lines. Handles his way gingerly through the tent-flaps. The lantern smashes him in the face. He pulls his pointless helmet off, finds the right wall of the tent and pitches straight over with his face to the bedroll, tight shoulders shaking. This is nothing he can cope with and he knows it. He charges out anyway with his saber in his hand as his men are massacred in the middle of the night. (The Khalifa's army didn't feel like waiting around for the morning. Seriously, you'd think the British Army would know from guerilla warfare by now.) He's useless. He knew that, too.

It's not just that it's a scene-stealing scenario, although it is. It's that Richardson plays it without vanity. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to Captain John Durrance of the Royal North Surrey Regiment, a man so confident of his own courage under fire that he sent a white feather to one of his oldest friends. He handles it terribly—he's not the reason his company's wiped out by the Mahdists, but they'd certainly have had a better chance if they hadn't been looking to a blind man to direct them against a night attack. Afraid of damaging morale, afraid of shirking his duty, afraid of having to admit anything is wrong, and the next thing he knows he's stumbling across the desert in the hands of a stranger, his sergeant lost with the rest of his men behind him. It should feel like just deserts. It might if Richardson were a more conventional actor. Instead it's heart-striking: a moment of private horror in the midst of an adventure film.

(I think the character's self-renunciatory gesture at the end of the film is idiotic, but am comforted by knowing it wasn't in the original novel. Also by headcanon that his friends won't let him get away with it, because seriously, he did this once before and look how well that worked out.)

In short, ladies and gentlemen: THE NATIONAL THEATRE.²

1. The speaking ones, anyway. Most of the extras in the North African scenes are people of color. This is frustrating in its own way. There is a Hadendoa commander in the Khalifa's army. The traditional hairstyle is instantly distinctive. We see him in several scenes, fighting, giving orders. He is played by a black actor; he has a striking face and voice; none of his lines are in English. I can't find who he is, because the actor doesn't appear to be credited. Even if he was a non-actor who was cast off the street and never made another film, I'd really like to know his name. John Laurie played the Khalifa, though!

2. I will never cease to love actual Ralph Richardson, but I will also never cease to love moon_custafer's cartoon.