The Last Remake of Beau Geste

Plot

Spoofing the classic Beau Geste and a number of other desert motion pictures, the film's plotline revolves around the heroic Beau Geste (York) and his "identical twin brother" Digby's (Feldman) misadventures in the French Foreign Legion out in the Sahara, and the disappearance of the family sapphire, sought after by their money-hungry stepmother and the sadistic Sergeant Markov (Ustinov).

Cast

Marty Feldman as Digby Geste (and uncredited as the Universal Costume Department man during the opening and closing credits)

Michael York as Beau Geste

Ann-Margret as Flavia Geste

Peter Ustinov as the brutal Sergeant Markov

Sinéad Cusack as sister Isabel Geste

Trevor Howard as Sir Hector

Spike Milligan as Crumble the Butler

Burt Kwouk as Father Shapiro

James Earl Jones as Arab Chief

Avery Schreiber as Arab Chieftain / Used Camel Salesman

Terry-Thomas as Warden

Henry Gibson as General Pecheur

Roy Kinnear as Corporal Boldini

Irene Handl as Miss Wormwood

Hugh Griffith as Judge

Stephen Lewis as Henshaw

Ed McMahon as Arab Horseman

Michael McConkey as young Digby

Roland MacLeod as Dr. Crippen

Martin Snaric as Valentino

Production

Development

Feldman had appeared in two film spoofs made by actor-writer-directors, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. In 1976, Feldman signed with Universal Pictures for a five-picture deal to direct, write, and act in films, beginning with The Last Remake of Beau Geste.

Feldman states in eyE Marty, his posthumously published autobiography, that when he originally suggested a film called The Last Remake of Beau Geste to Universal, he was not only joking but also "thinking of the wrong foreign-legion film. The film I was thinking about was called The Four Feathers."

"We see Marty as a triple threat artist," said a Universal spokesman. "Marty is like a throwback to the old silent comics who could do it all. It doesn't matter that he's British because physical gags travel. That's why he has a major future ahead of him and why we've made a major, major investment in Marty at Universal."

"Everybody has a five picture deal," said Feldman. "Until the first picture bombs. Then they have a no picture deal."

Feldman called it a "broad comic parody". He wrote it during and after the making of Sherlock Holmes.

"There's the whole idea of dying nobly, a bull---- idea. The film will poke fun at the way people think about war, dying for flags instead of people, heroism. There is a serious element in all comedy... the two overlap and merge. I see life as absurd and there's dignity in the absurd. Keaton had it. Chaplin had it. Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. What we're saying about life is laugh."

"I didn't want to work with clowns but actors who can clown," he said.

Shooting

Filming began August 30, 1976.

The film was shot on location in Spain, and in Ireland at Ardmore Studios in Bray, and on location at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin and Adare Manor near Limerick.

Filming was difficult, with the shoot plagued by excessive rain in Madrid. Feldman also fell ill with chicken pox and production was suspended while he went away to recover.

The film went over budget and over schedule.

After completing his cut of the film, Universal sent Feldman on a two-week "working vacation." While he was gone, Universal recut the film and had John Morris compose a new score. Feldman's friend Alan Spencer said the two cuts were markedly different – Feldman's was more surreal and Pythonesque, whereas Universal's told a more conventional story. The Universal version ended with a scene where Feldman's began, because his was told in flashback. Spencer says both versions were tested before audiences, and Feldman's version tested better, but Universal ultimately released their cut of the film.

Release

Feldman was angry with Universal for distributing their recut of the film. Attempts have been made since his death in 1982 to have the director's cut released, but so far have been unsuccessful. According to Michael York, "Marty's version was much funnier." The film was released on DVD in the US on January 11, 2010, as part of the Universal Vault Series of DVD-on-Demand titles, sold by Amazon.com, in the UK, the film was released through Second Sight Films on January 24, 2011.

Kino Lorber released a Blu-ray special edition of The Last Remake of Beau Geste featuring a commentary from Alan Spencer that verbally recreates Feldman's cut.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 14 reviews.

Domestic reviews

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote a positive review of the film, describing it as having "a whole range of jokes that are funny primarily because they are in absolutely terrible taste." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and called it "only a slightly above-average comedy. It starts out with a number of funny sequences, and Feldman is funny-looking for a few minutes. But I don't find him interesting enough or funny enough or likable enough to carry an entire movie."

In Variety, Arthur D. Murphy wrote that the film "emerges as an often hilarious, if uneven, spoof of Foreign Legion films ... An excellent cast, top to bottom, gets the most out of the stronger scenes, and carries the weaker ones." Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker called the film "recklessly funny" and "a hilarious exercise in taste run amok."

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "There are too few jokes and rapturous inventions to sustain even the movie's brief 85 minutes, some of those that exist are strained too hard and some should have been dropped after the first draft. It gets to be a long siege at the fort." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "Although there's no difference in the games they like to play, Feldman seems a shaky, bush-league terrible joker compared to a prodigal, big-league terrible joker like [Mel] Brooks ... Feldman often seems uncertain about whether a sight gag will pay off, so to reassure himself, he'll run it into the ground."

Rex Reed, in the New York Daily News, called the film "a bogus Foreign Legion farce by alleged comic Marty Feldman, who looks like a boll weevil with glaucoma. Physical repulsiveness is a poor substitute for bankrupted humor." He also said that it "steals, borrows and mostly begs whatever meager laughs it gets from old, discarded Mel Brooks jokes. Rarely have I seen anything labeled "comedy" so desperately on its knees or so hopelessly bereft of humor and originality. Feldman eats paper, falls on his bug-eyed face in the mud, and has the gall to superimpose himself onto film clips of Gary Cooper from William Wellman's original masterpiece Beau Geste. Sometimes the more boring desert battles are interrupted by Ed McMahon doing used-camel commercials. The Last Remake of Beau Geste is vulgar and a disgraceful waste of Universal's money and the talents of Ann-Margret, Peter Ustinov and James Earl Jones. Watching them knock their heads against a blank wall is like watching a parade, in which prancing beauty queens try gracefully to step over whatever the horses have dropped in the streets. It's called The Last Remake of Beau Geste. One hopes it is also the last time Marty Feldman will remake anything. It probably won't be, but I can dream can't I?" Kathleen Carroll, also of the Daily News, said, in a 2½-star review, that "what purports to be a merry sendup of P.S. Wren's desert classic of brave legionnaires is really a third-rate imitation of Brooks' raunchy, reckless film comedies—and done with a very heavy hand, at that. Feldman simply presses too hard and attempts too much."

International reviews

David Robinson of The Times wrote that "the somber lesson of the film is that, with Marty Feldman's material, the harder people try the less funny they tend to be. He himself works hardest of all. Peter Ustinov (wooden-legged Legion general), Roy Kinnear (his wooden-headed side-kick) and Spike Milligan (crumbling butler) also try far too much. In the outcome Ann Margret and Michael York, playing it just off straight, come off best, apart from a treasurable scene between Irene Handl as proprietress of a Dotheboys orphanage and Trevor Howard as Sir Hector Geste, seeking to purchase his Beau from her much-soiled stock." A set of paragraphs were written about the film by Patrick Gibbs of The Daily Telegraph, which read as follows: HAVING ACTED in some of Mel Brooks's "send-ups," Marty Feldman, of the pop eyes and small size, evidently thought he could do it himself. And, by goodness, in The Last Remake of Beau Geste, he shows he can.

But what exactly is this "it?" purists may reasonably ask, After some consideration I pronounce the genre to be a bastard, born of parody and burlesque, and it is much to the credit of Mr Feldman in his roles as director, writer and actor, including leading actor, that the piece never quite falls between them.

This is the result partly of the spanking pace, partly of the sheer self-confidence the film exudes, and certainly much is owed to some very happy comic inventions.

Not the least of these is the basic idea of making Sir Hector Geste (Trevor Howard) childless, and so forced to adopt an heir. This leads him into getting not the one spunky boy he wants (Michael York) but also his twin (Mr. Feldman).

Their adventures in the French Foreign Legion, after that awful business of the missing diamond belonging to Sir Hector's new wife (Ann-Margret), are much as one would expect, given that the sadistic Sgt. Markov is portrayed by Peter Ustinov in Stroheim style, complete with a repertory of artificial legs.

Derek Malcolm of The Guardian quipped: "I'm not at all sure what Buster Keaton would have thought of Marty Feldman's The Last Remake of Beau Geste. But I think Mel Brooks will like it. He ought to, since Feldman's first feature as director is the direct result of his success in America in Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie. And Beau Geste has much the same hit-or-miss tenacity of both those movies. Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard wrote that "the trouble with The Last Remake of Beau Geste is that while it is packed with hilarious sight gags, they don’t seem connected to the parody that is always promised (but ultimately never delivered) of P.C. Wren’s tale of derring-do among the Foreign Legion of lost men. Marty Feldman's troika role as star producer and director may account for the frenetic tone of a film that often feels as if it to be in three places at once."

Aftermath

The film was described as a "surprise hit" and Feldman was able to direct a second film for Universal, In God We Tru$t, released in 1980.