Saturday, 18 September 2021 19:13

Lost Patrol, The






THE LOST PATROL

US, 1934, 74 minutes, Black and White.
Victor Mc Laglen, Boris Karloff., Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny, J. M. Kerrigan, Billy Bevan. Alan Hale.
Directed by John Ford.

The Lost Patrol is of interest as an early John Ford sound film. Written by Dudley Nichols, writer of many of Ford's films including Stagecoach, the film shows a group in World War One lost in the Mesopotamian desert. The unseen Arabs eliminate the soldiers one by one. There is a typical Hollywood score for the film by Max Steiner and he won the Oscar for it that year. Victor Mc Laglen is the sergeant who is the hero. He was to make The Informer with Ford the next year and win the Oscar. (Nichols was responsible also for this screenplay.) There is a good supporting cast with an eccentric performance by Boris Karloff as a religious fanatic. The film is brief, was filmed in the American desert and conveys the atmosphere of the isolated patrol and their fears of the Arabs.

1. An entertaining adventure? Interesting study of soldiers, lost men, men afraid of losing their lives?

2. The conventions of the desert warfare film: the patrol, their being in the desert, becoming lost, the oasis, their defences, the collapse of morale, the fears, the heroism? The interplay of the men?

3. The black and white photography, an atmosphere of the desert? The oasis set? The contribution of the score?

4. The plausibility of the plot ? for purposes of the adventure, the character study? The credible behaviour of the soldiers? The contrived situation for the various types of soldier, the men telling their stories, their deaths?

5. The film's focus on the sergeant? As a character, strengths, weaknesses? His taking over, leading the men to the oasis, his decision about saving them, sending soldiers off. his final confrontation of fear, isolation? His burying the men, final heroism and being saved? His life story, family, son?

6. Boris Karloff as the religious fanatic? The burials, the glint in his eye, the saying of prayers, his denunciations, his finally going mad, escaping, death?

7. George Brown as the soldier who had been about the world, suave, his stories? Morelli and his survival, his fears before his death? Quincannon and the Irish background? The various soldiers and their explanations of themselves, the ordinariness of their life stories, families, experiences before the war? A cross-section of ordinary men? Dying?

8. The unseen Arabs? the glimpses, the rifle shots? The effect of sniping on the group? The deaths, the ugliness, the men being returned on the horses? The plane landing and the death of the pilot? The destruction of the plane?

9. The final rescue? just in time, yet the pathos of so many men dying?

10. The film as a desert adventure, a study of human nature, a comment on war?