The Four Feathers (1939 Film) - Plot

Plot

In 1895, the The Royal North Surrey Regiment is called to active service to join the army of Sir Herbert Kitchener in the Mahdist War against the forces of The Khalifa (John Laurie). Forced into an army career by family tradition, Lieutenant Harry Faversham (John Clements) resigns his commission on the eve of its departure. As a result, his three friends and fellow officers, Captain John Durrance (Ralph Richardson) and Lieutenants Burroughs (Donald Gray) and Willoughby (Jack Allen), show their contempt of his perceived cowardice by each sending him a white feather attached to a calling card. When his fiancée, Ethne Burroughs (June Duprez), says nothing in his defence, he bitterly demands a fourth from her. She refuses, but he plucks one from her fan. Harry confides in an old mentor and former surgeon in his father's regiment, Dr. Sutton (Frederick Culley), that he is indeed a coward and must make amends. He departs for Egypt. There, he adopts the disguise of a despised mute Sangali native, with the help of Dr. Harraz (Henry Oscar), to hide his lack of knowledge of the language.

During the army's advance, Durrance is ordered to take his company through the desert to lure the Khalifa's army away from Omdurman. Durrance is blinded by sunstroke before he can lead the company to safety and it is overrun and wiped out. He is left for dead on the battlefield, and Burroughs and Willoughby are captured. However, the disguised Faversham takes the delirious Durrance across the desert and down the Nile to the vicinity of a British fort. As he puts Durrance's white feather into a letter that Durrance kept with him, Harry is mistaken for a robber. Faversham is placed in a convict gang, but escapes to continue his quest. Six months later, the blind Durrance has returned to England to learn to cope with permanent blindness. Out of pity, Ethne pledges to marry and care for him. At dinner with Ethne, her father, and Dr. Sutton, as Durrance relates the tale of his miraculous rescue, the white feather drops out of his letter, revealing to the others that his rescuer was Harry Faversham. Nobody has the heart to tell Durrance.

Burroughs and Willoughby are abused and kept in a dungeon in Omdurman with other enemies of the Khalifa. Playing the addled Sangali, Faversham surreptitiously gives them hope of escape and passes a file to unlock their chains, but arouses the suspicions of the guards. He is flogged as a spy and imprisoned with the others. He reveals his identity to his friends and organizes an escape as a last chance to survive the coming attack of Kitchener's army. The prisoners overpower their guards and use their weapons to seize and hold the Khalifa's arsenal.

Durrance learns of Faversham's deeds from a newspaper account read to him by Dr. Sutton, and dictates a letter to Ethne to break their engagement on the false pretext of a prolonged course of treatment in Germany to restore his eyesight, and includes congratulations to Faversham. Some time later Harry, in mufti, attends a dinner with his friends and Ethne, where General Burroughs (C. Aubrey Smith), Ethne's father, acknowledges that Harry has forced all to take back their feathers—except Ethne. He playfully makes her take back her white feather by interrupting Gen. Burroughs in the midst of his favourite war story about the Battle of Balaclava to correct his embellishments; the irritated general complains that he will never be able to tell that story again.

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