Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) is on a lot of lists of Best Movies and it's really hard to fault it. But, if you wanted a history lesson, then pretend that the movie describes things happening on the Planet Mars. This movie twists history so thoroughly that it might as well have been written by Mel Brooks. But, if it hadn't tried to connect itself to real events, it would stand as an excellent romantic drama. If you're teaching history in high school or college and some student tells you that the charge of the light cavalry at Balaclava was to revenge something that happened in India or that it enabled the Brits to win the Crimean War, you know your student watched this old flick instead of reading anything.

Fully 4/5 of this movie takes place in India - or at least the sort of India described by Kipling and filmed by Hollywood. Actually, all the scenes were shot in Southern California. I am now going to reveal the movie plot! Supposedly, in 1853, in India, Errol Flynn as Capt. Geoffry Vickers is stationed in the British garrison in the hill province of Suristan, whose ruler, Surat Khan, plots a treacherous massacre of the women and children of the garrison. Flynn survives with maybe half of the lancers from the garrison, but they all vow a hideous revenge against Surat Khan. Within six months (this is the last half hour of the film) they are all reassigned to the Crimean War. Vickers discovers that Surat Khan has taken refuge with the Czar's army and is with the Russian general at Balaclava, near the important port of Sevastopol. The British desperately want to take Sevastopol and an attack on the Russian position on Balaclava might divert enough of the Russian army to enable the Brits to take the port but an assault on the heights of Balaclava would be too suicidal and the British Gen. Macefield rejects the idea. Sitting in an elegant house being used as the British command center, Flynn forges the general's signatures on order commanding the lancers to attack the Russians at Balaclava and the rest of the British army to assault Sevastopol. Then Flynn rejoins his lancers, informs them that Surat Khan is with the Russians and today they are going to avenge the massacre of Suristan. We see a very impressive battle scene in which Flynn is killed heroically but not until he manages to kill Surat Khan. Afterwards, the other generals are so astounded at the wonderful victory they attained in Sevastopol thanks to the unexplained charge at Balaclava and Gen. Macefield graciously takes responsibility for giving the order. OK, that's the movie.

In reality, there was no Surat Khan, no Suristan, no massacre of an English outpost, no General Macefield, no Indian connection to the Crimean War. The charge of the light infantry (Lord Lucan's 11th light dragoons, not the 27th lancers) took place after the British army deliberately avoided a direct attack on Sevastopol and it was the result of a message scribbled while on horseback, written by the commander Lord Raglan, who had assisted Wellington in beating Napolean forty years earlier but by now was showing signs of senility. The mistake lay in his very careless phrasing; he had meant that the British should pull their cannons back and retreat to a safe distance, but the recipient (Lord Lucan) thought the message meant that the British should somehow seize the Russian cannons at the far end of the valley. This required a prolonged, and nearly suicidal, cavalry charge the whole length of the valley ... and back ... while the Russian army on both hillsides shot at them like sitting ducks. About half the light cavalry was killed in this massacre. The glory, such as it was, was that the British cavalry didn't flinch from doing what they knew to be suicidal. The British did not bother attacking Sevastopol for months, by which time Lord Raglan was recalled and blamed for the failure of the war effort, and the government back in London changed hands. Eventually the war ended, ostensibly in the British favor but with such terrible losses that it's hard to be sure.

So the movie doesn't explain history at all. By the way, the "charge" scenes in this movie were one of the reasons that Hollywood started policing the way animals were treated in films. This movie provides one of the last examples of the use in Hollywood of trip wires and other cruel contrivances designed to make horses fall down suddenly. Several horses, and one stunt rider, were killed making this movie. It was while doing this scene that Hungarian director Michael Curtiz gave the memorable instructions "Bring on the empty horses" (which David Niven used for his memoirs, although Niven's character was killed off back in India). Seeing Nigel Bruce supposedly astride a horse completely contradicts the notion of a "light" cavalry. It's a little odd to hear so few English accents (e.g. Nigel Bruce's wife is Spring Byington and one of the British generals later played "The Old Ranger" on TV's Death Valley Days) and some other oddities (leaving India for the Crimea, two lancers promise to rendezvous at Balaclava ... an obscure village utterly unknown to the world until the Brits stumbled onto it on the day of the Charge; and the Russian bugle call seems to resemble the one used at the Kentucky Derby).

In case you were wondering, in 1968 there was a sumptuous British production of the same name that actually attempted to tell the Truth about the famous charge, based on Cecil Woodham-Smith's book "The Reason Why" (some paperback editions of that book include photos from both movies). This movie is so crowded with historical detail and characters that it was a terrible, and painful, flop; perhaps proof that it doesn't pay to try to re-enact history truthfully. A last humiliation came about thirty years later; the producer of the 1968 film, Tony Richardson, is perhaps better known as "Mister Vanessa Redgrave", so when Vanessa was supposed to get some honor at big event sponsored by the French government, they had arranged to show her husband's movie ... except when the lights dimmed it turned out by some snafu that they had gotten the Errol Flynn film instead.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older