March or Die (1977)

User Rating:

6.1/10   

Director:

Dick Richards

Writers:

David Zelag Goodman (story) and
Dick Richards (story) ...

Release Date:

8 September 1977 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drama | War | Adventure | Romance

Tagline:

The Foreign Legion - they were the greatest fighting force of all time and they obeyed but one command - [March Or Die]

Plot:

Foreign Legion Major Foster (Hackman), an American haunted by his memories of the recently-ended Great War...

Plot Keywords:

Arab | Foreign Legion | Mowing Down | Brutality | Cruelty

Cast

Gene Hackman	...	Maj. William Sherman Foster
Terence Hill	...	Marco Segrain
Catherine Deneuve	...	Simone Picard
Max von Sydow	...	François Marneau
Ian Holm	...	El Krim
Jack O'Halloran	...	Ivan
Rufus	...	Sgt. Triand
Marcel Bozzuffi	...	Lt. Fontaine
André Penvern	...	Top Hat
Paul Sherman	...	Fred Hastings
Vernon Dobtcheff	...	Mean corporal
Marne Maitland	...	Leon
Luigi Bonos	...	Andre
Wolf Kahler	...	German #1
Matthias Hell	...	German #2

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Netherlands:16 | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Norway:16 (1978) | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:PG | Germany:12 | Argentina:13

Filming Locations:

Imperial County, California, USA

Company:

Sir Lew Grade

Trivia:

Selected by Quentin Tarantino for the First Quentin Tarantino Film Fest in Austin, Texas, 1996.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The Legion uses French military equipment and customs. Yet in one scene, when the new recruits are awakened one morning, an American bugle call (reveille) is used.

Quotes:

Marco Segrain: [facing a line of new recruits and citing the late Major Foster] Some of will give up. Some of you will even try to run. I warn you, until now no one succeeded. When the Legion doesn't get you, the Arabs will. When the Arabs won't catch you, the desert will. And when the desert doesn't devour your measly corpses, then I will. I wouldn't know what's worse

Movie Connections:

Version of Legionnaire (1998)

Soundtrack:

For He's a Jolly Good Fellow

March or Die

is this film a classic? It surely has certain elements that could make

it one. Catherine Deneuve at her best, at the very pinnacle of her

beauty; Max Von Sydow as an archeologist who convinces the French gov't to resume digging in ruins in morocco, in an area containing unruly and savage Berber tribes that have slaughtered all comers; Gene Hackman as the legionnaire captain who has to break his promise to those very tribes that they would never venture into the area again; the guy who played Jaws in James Bond as a Russian 'volunteer' to the legion, sporting a beard that any Taliban would be envious of; some unknown as Marco, a riviera jewel thief, also 'volunteered' into the legion and a cast of doomed conscripts.

The whole film plays out like a funeral procession. the captain

(Hackman) keeps spouting his bile at the gov't, the authorities, the academics, etc. who have condoned this suicide mission, knowing full well they are throwing away men's lives for nothing. He keeps raving in fact even as the Arab tribes are massing and charging toward them.

As in any classic French foreign legion film, the doomed legionnaires are holed up in the ruins of an old castle, hopelessly outnumbered with no escape. if the Arabs don't kill them, the desert will. If the desert

doesn't kill them, the legion will kill them as deserters. There is no

salvation. Only death with honor.

In fact, there is little suspense in the film, as everyone involved

considers the mission absolutely hopeless. And they are right: they

are all gunned down or hacked apart by the desert marauders. The director has a strange sense of cruelty, methodically showing them getting it, one by one.

It's a weird sort of film that relishes and wallows in pure

nihilism. One is left wondering, 'what was the point?'.

I guess that was the idea. I kept waiting for a Hollywood ending, a

speck of optimism on the horizon, a sudden miraculous twist, but as the

credits rolled to a sonorous drum beat i realized, 'Hmmm... this is it, I guess'.

The gloom and doom telegraphed from the very beginning

played out step by step with no surprises or hitches. Sort of a

strange exercise in film-making, if you ask me.

Didn't Gene Hackman comment on this baby, "March or Die: the audience marched in and this film died"?