Three Comrades (1938)

A lot of fun.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.Nazis are coming. German people are ticked off about the end of World War One. They are the losers in the world conflict. They need food, money and jobs. Soon, they will be led by a supposed savior, whom I call Uncle Adolph, who will later lead them into yet another war, World War Two. Adolph was a corporal in World War One.The film is vague about this. I thought the violent scenes are about communists, being after 1917 and all, but I realize that in post-World War One that some disgruntled German survivors get nasty about what they want. They are what later become the National Socialist Party.Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Franchot Tone have American voices, but are German war veterans. They are happy go lucky, and Taylor ends up marrying Margaret Sullavan, with the other two men as nice guy hangers on.Sullavan does a Camille and has consumption/TB. She goes to a sanitarium, gets an operation (paid for by her sugar daddy buying the three men's sports car) but still passes away.Sad but happy, this film. Robert Young also gets a demise, but arises to become Dr. Marcus Welby, M.D. and Father Knows Best.

In the early sound era, one of the most respected directors in Hollywood was Frank Borzage: in fact, he won the very first Academy Award for Best Director (and would win a second one five years later). Yet his work is now virtually unknown. THREE COMRADES came during his tenure at MGM, where he would stay for the next five years (previously, he had been one of the star directors at Fox, and then worked at Columbia and Warner Brothers); it reunited him with Margaret Sullavan, with whom he had worked on LITTLE MAN WHAT NOW in 1934, and it would represent the only official screen credit for F. Scott Fitzgerald. There are moments (especially in the romance between the poor aristocrat Patricia and the young mechanic Erik) in which you can hear the lilt and romanticism of Fitzgerald's sensibility. THREE COMRADES was one of those movies that played a lot of television in late 1950s-early 1960s, and the moving story of three comrades (played by Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Franchot Tone) and the young woman who enters their lives (played by the great Sullavan, in her Academy Award-nominated performance) trying to find some solace and happiness in the rubble of Germany in the period immediately following the first World War is remarkably touching. Though often criticized for the (many) compromises that went into the making (this was a major studio production in 1938, beset with all the production code and commercial considerations of the era), there's still enough of Remarque's powerful story, Fitzgerald's elegant dialog, and Borzage's romanticism (as well as the superb performance by Margaret Sullavan) to make this one of the most memorable American movies of the 1930s.

Yes, but between whom? THREE COMRADES is remembered today for it's classy acting by Margaret Sullivan, Robert Taylor, Robert Young, and Franchot Tone, for it's setting in Germany after World War I, and for it's screenplay, which is the closest thing to a complete movie script that F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote. Actually his original script has been published (about twenty five years ago), and shows it was far more outspoken in pinpointing politics than this film is. Hollywood, in 1938, was aware of the Nazis and of their racial and political policies, but they were also aware of the opposition to any type of open criticism of the right in Europe by the U.S. Congress. So Fitzgerald's script was toned down. His work is still pretty good, but one misses the bite he would have fully given if the script had not been tampered with. It does give a pretty good view of the political confusion and economic dislocation following the end of the World War, but for all an audience knows the fighting in the city might be over rival soccer teams!

"Three Comrades" is one of Frank Borzage's most poignant and memorable love stories. Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque on post-World War I Germany, it concerns three war veterans - Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, and Robert Young - returning to Berlin on the brink of Nazism and poverty. They share the love of one woman played by Margaret Sullavan who provides them with hope and eternal transcendence. "Three Comrades" is less emotionally gripping than Borzage's other anti-Nazi films starring Sullavan - "Little Man What Now?"(1934) & "The Mortal Storm"(1940) - but it is imbued with a tender, soft-focus romantic aura and Borzage's characteristic signature, the redemptive powers of love. Like her role in Borzage's "Little Man", Sullavan is extraordinarily luminous and touching. Aside from Borzage's ethereal touch, I think she is the one that makes the film truly memorable and poignant. The final moment is particularly priceless.