Frank Borzage’s Three Comrades is an entertaining if somewhat slight romantic drama featuring noteworthy MGM production gloss and fine actors doing some of their best on-screen work.
The Production: 3.5/5
Two-time Oscar-winning director Frank Borzage brings his patented sentimental romantic vision to Three Comrades, a fine if somewhat compromised film version of the Erich Maria Remarque novel. MGM added an appealing actress to their star stable with Margaret Sullavan, and she works well with the three esteemed male stars playing the title roles. Louis B. Mayer’s dictate that there would be no mention of Nazis in this 1920s set German story hampers the turbulent atmosphere swirling around the central love stories, but audiences likely were there for the romance anyway, and they got their money’s worth.
After surviving World War I, German soldiers Erich Lohkamp (Robert Taylor), Otto Koster (Franchot Tone), and Gottfried Lenz (Robert Young) return home hoping to get their lives back to normal. They open a combination mechanics shop/taxi service and squeak out a living while noting that the German economy is terribly unstable and in recession leading to armed protests in the streets for people eager for Germany to get back on its feet after its humiliating defeat in the war. The three are introduced to fallen aristocrat Pat Hollmann (Margaret Sullavan) in the company of the wealthy if imperious Franz Breuer (Lionel Atwill), and she immediately charms them all, Erich most especially, and they embark on a tentative romance. She’s hiding a secret: she has tuberculosis and has a less than rosy future ahead, but Otto, seeing how much the two are in love, persuades each of them to give in and marry even though neither has anything but their love to sustain them through the perilous months ahead.
Erich Maria Remarque’s novel has been adapted for the screen by Edward E. Paramore and F. Scott Fitzgerald (his only movie credit though he toiled in Hollywood for many years). It’s also alleged that the script was helped along by future four-time Oscar winner Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also produced the picture. There is very little story to impart as the narrative is more character driven: Erich the dreamer, Gottfried the cautious revolutionary, and Otto the paterfamilias of the three friends, all of them basically in love with the same woman but such swell guys that there is no rivalry for her hand. It takes some time to accept our trio as Germans (especially Robert Taylor with his twangy midwestern accent), and the wardrobe and hairstyles don’t suggest the 1920s at all, but the doomed love story is the central focus of the film (despite the irritating tendency of faux noble behavior when people in love don’t tell each other truths about their lives), and director Frank Borgaze makes sure the romance gets its full due by filling it with his notable starry-eyed touches: the three comrades meeting cute with the once wealthy heiress, a hilarious moment at a society party where Erich’s tuxedo falls apart, a mostly wordless wedding sequence where close-ups convey the entire affair, and the lovely if ill-fated honeymoon which sets up the film’s darker final quarter hour. The politics of the era are mostly going on in the background and never discussed in any real depth leading to a piece of the story dealing with initial tragedy not earning its full measure of empathy, but the series of doctors that Pat sees for her ailing condition (played by familiar faces Charley Grapewin, Monty Woolley, and George Zucco) keep her precarious condition front and center for the final’s final third.
Robert Taylor must have been experiencing quite a bit of deja-vu playing for the second time in a year a man dealing with his loved one’s consumption (the other: George Cukor’s magnificent Camille), but his doe-eyed innocence as he explores the wonders of true love made it easy to understand his popularity at the box-office in 1938 (ranked sixth that year). Margaret Sullvan earned an Oscar nomination for her delicate sincerity playing Pat. She’s earnest and straightforward without a touch of artificiality in her performance. Franchot Tone gives the film’s best performance as the trio’s soul of reason and protection while Robert Young’s revolutionary could use a touch more fire to convey the depths of his belief in his cause. Guy Kibbee is affable and appealing as café owner Alfons who keeps the boys well provided for with rum, and Lionel Atwell does his usually expert job as an oily aristocrat used to having his own way and paying whatever it takes to get it. In tiny, unbilled cameos, you’ll see Philip Terry (making the second of two of Joan Crawford future ex-husbands along with Franchot Tone appearing in the film) and Henry Brandon as an eye-patched ex-soldier.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37:1 is faithfully rendered in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. It’s a gorgeous picture put before us with not a trace of dust, dirt, or scratches, and with excellent grayscale and contrast giving depths to the black levels and helping Margaret Sullavan’s notable silver gown shimmer in its multiple appearances. The movie has been divided into 26 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix offers surprising clarity and fidelity for audio elements of this age. Dialogue is presented beautifully, and it has been mixed with Franz Waxman’s background score and the various sound effects to produce a notably strong audio track. There are no instances of hiss, pops, crackle, or flutter to mar one’s enjoyment of the presentation.
Special Features: 2/5
MGM Live Action Shorts (SD): both from 1938, The Face Behind the Mask (10:46) directed by Jacques Tournier and How to Raise a Baby (3:02) starring Robert Benchley.
Theatrical Trailer (3:26, SD)
Overall: 3.5/5
Frank Borzage’s Three Comrades is an entertaining if somewhat slight romantic drama featuring noteworthy MGM production gloss and a host of actors doing some of their best on-screen work. The Warner Archive Blu-ray edition makes a most welcome addition to the catalog’s collection of titles.
Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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