Why is The Charge of the Light Brigade so rarely even mentioned among Errol Flynn's swashbucklers? It's a terrific movie, something like the peak of spectacular Hollywood action filmmaking and the bravura style of Michael Curtiz. The setting--till the Crimean War climax--is the Indian frontier (impersonated, as so often, by rocky Lone Pine, California), where the 27th Bengal Lancers run afoul of an Oxford-educated slime named Surat Khan (C. Henry Gordon). Flynn and Olivia de Havilland bring real tenderness to two-thirds of a romantic triangle (the other corner is the hero's brother, Patric Knowles). There's the fearsome siege of Chukoti, an unspeakable atrocity, and finally the foolhardy, inspired Charge at Balaklava. The camerawork and editing of that grand sequence never cease to astonish. History (and political correctness) is better served by the 1968 Tony Richardson movie, but for unabashed epic sweep and matchless thrills, this is the one you want. --Richard T. JamesonMore...
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