Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The (Region B) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Mar 12, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Henry HathawayRelease Date(s)
1935 (January 20, 2025)Studio(s)
Paramount Pictures (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: C+
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region B-locked British Blu-ray import.]
Quite enjoyable but also very dated, historically inauthentic, and culturally and politically insensitive, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) was an early entry in the vogue of rollicking colonial adventure yarns that gave birth to such classics as Beau Geste and Gunga Din (both 1939), parallel to similar British films. Celebrating the traditions of the British military and colonial rule, typically India but sometimes Africa and elsewhere (though usually filmed at Iverson Movie Ranch, in the Valley), such Hollywood-made pictures celebrate the close bond among young soldiers looking for adventure, finding it in exotic, faraway lands, impossibly outnumbered by sadistic indigenous tribes practicing strange religions.
I’ve not seen Kino’s 2020 Blu-ray release of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, but while this Indicator/Powerhouse Films release touts a 4K restoration, which has received excellent reviews elsewhere, I found the presentation very disappointing. While, admittedly, Paramount’s house style of the period tended toward a kind of shimmering soft-focus, the presentation here is, to my eyes, far too soft, especially obvious in long shots, wide angles where everything is pretty much a smeary blur. Film transfer technology today is so good one easily can spot the increased graininess of second-generation film during opticals such as dissolves from one scene to another. Here, strangely, the opposite is true: the dissolves are noticeably sharper than the straight cuts. The opening titles are also noticeably splotchy. One possible explanation is that Universal, the longtime owners of the film, applied some kind of digital clean-up program to eliminate negative scratches and other damage, and in so doing made the entire feature several notches softer than it should be.
The movie takes its name from British soldier Francis Yeats-Brown’s 1930 autobiography, but that’s where the similarities end; the movie is an entirely original concoction. During the British Raj, on the northwest frontier of India, long-timer Lt. Alan McGregor (Gary Cooper) welcomes two new replacements, sardonic Lt. John Forsythe (Franchot Tone) and green “cub” Lt. Donald Stone (Richard Cromwell), son of the unit’s commander, Col. Tom Stone (Guy Standing), who works closely with adjutant and contemporary Maj. Hamilton (C. Aubrey Smith).
Between action scenes, most of the film explores the friendship among the three lieutenants and the two older officers. Connecting them is the awkward relationship between the older and younger Stone, Donald desperately wanting to win approval from his old-fashioned, emotionally distant father, strained further by the lad’s impulsive behavior which gets him into trouble and risks the regiment’s security, and by the elder Stone refusing to show any favoritism, demanding strict military protocol even with he and his son are alone in the same room. The more experienced McGregor and Forsythe try to help the boy, in between playing practical jokes on one another.
Lieutenant Barrett (Colin Tapley), working undercover as a rebel and spying on Mohammed Khan (Douglass Dumbrille), learns that Khan plans to intercept a shipment of two million rounds of ammunition. Khan, for his part, sends Russian agent Tania Volkanskaya (Kathleen Burke, of Island of Lost Souls) to seduce and kidnap Lt. Stone. When the elder Stone refuses to send any men to rescue the boy, McGregor and Forsythe disobey orders, disguising themselves as native merchants to infiltrate Khan’s lair, but soon are captured themselves.
The film has many good points: Cooper and Tone are very appealing, if not remotely British. (Cooper’s character is said to be Scotch-Canadian, but that doesn’t explain Tone’s and Cromwell’s American accents.) Richard Cromwell plays one of those sniveling, emotionally unstable and excitable characters films of this type always seem to have. (Even the Laurel & Hardy spoof Bonnie Scotland, released that same year, had one, to that comedy’s detriment.) Guy Standing, however, is excellent as the father, giving an unusually naturalistic, empathetic portrayal, unusual for the period. The big-scale battle climax is impressively tense and spectacular.
In other respects, the film is embarrassingly politically-incorrect, particularly in its fantasy of the Islamic rebels, smoothly if inauthentically played by fine actors including Dumbrille, Akim Tamiroff (as the Emir) and J. Carrol Naish (as the Grand Vizer), characters whose costumes seem more appropriate to a Sinbad movie-imagined Bagdad than the Northwest Frontier. Later British Colonial adventure films like Zulu (1964) and John Huston’s superb The Man Who Would Be King (1975) delicately balanced the heroic adventure spirit of those stories with better authenticity with regards to the “natives.” They acknowledged British racism and insensitivity, often ironically. As with Native Americans in most ‘30s and ‘40s Westerns, they’re simply “the bad guys” in the broadest sense. Indeed, it’s The Lives of a Bengal Lancer that introduced the iconic line when Khan warns McGregor and his pals, “We have ways of making men talk.”
The movie, though, was a huge hit, earning about $1.5 million in rentals, the equivalent to something like $500 million today, and nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning one (the soon disbanded Best Assistant Director category).
As noted in greater detail above, Indicator’s Region “B” video transfer of the black-and-white, 1.37:1 standard frame The Lives of a Bengal Lancer disappoints with its softness, though billed as a 4K restoration. The mono audio fairs better, and it’s supported by optional English subtitles. This is a limited edition of 3,000 copies.
The extra features consist of an audio commentary by screenwriter and novelist C. Courtney Joyner and filmmaker Steve Latshaw; a 27-minute video essay on the film by film historian Sheldon Hall; a 54-minute Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film, starring Errol Flynn, Brian Aherne, and Jackie Cooper; and a trailer and image gallery. The Digital Bits was provided only with a check disc, and thus did not received a copy of the 40-page booklet reportedly included, featuring new essays and archival interviews.
Certainly entertaining in its own way, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer is starkly dated in others, and despite good, even rave reviews about the video transfer on other sites, I found this one lacking.
- Stuart Galbraith IV