As cited in The Mad Dog of Europe, Three Comrades (1938) was the first American studio film to chronicle the rise of European fascism in the 1930s. It’s based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front) and scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald. After tasting defeat in “the Great War”, three German veterans open up a repair shop together and settle down to normalcy. Patricia (the luminous Margaret Sullavan) becomes the fourth leg of their deep friendship. But their fond hopes run up against the rising tide of political extremism in Germany…
Director Frank Borzage is celebrated by cinephiles as one of the great romantics of the Golden Age. He also directed The Mortal Storm, again with Margaret Sullavan (1940), also showing this week. Producer Joe Mankiewicz was the younger brother of Herman J, who wrote Mad Dog of Europe.
One of those incandescent Borzage romances where time is simply non- existent: impossibly pure, absurdly naïve, yet magically tender.
Tom Milne, Time Out
It winds up being a beautiful film, even an unforgettable one, because of the work of Frank Borzage and Margaret Sullavan. Sullavan won the New York Film Critic’s prize for her role here, and it was deserved: if Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner stands as her best movie, then this is certainly her best performance. She brings the film to life gradually, delicately, making full use of Fitzgerald’s wistful little poeticisms.
Dan Callahan, Slant
Frank Borzage
Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, Franchot Tone, Robert Young
USA
1938
English
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Sunday November 08
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Credits
Producer
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenwriter
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edward E. Paramore, Jr.
Cinematography
Joseph Ruttenberg
Original Music
Franz Waxman
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