| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Film Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Film Review

The Four Feathers. Produced by Paul Feldsher; directed by Shekhar Kapur; screenplay by Hossein Amini and Michael Schiffer. 2002; color; 125 minutes. Distributed by Miramax.

A. E. W. Mason's classic adventure novel The Four Feathers, published in 1902, became his most popular and enduring work. It was inspired by a trip the author made to Egypt, which included a stay in Khartoum and the ruined city of Omdurman, where Lord Kitchener had broken the Khalifa's power two years earlier. Nearby was the notorious prison called the House of Stone, where the Khalifa's captives had been imprisoned like sheep in a pen. There, Mason heard legends of a man, disguised as a dervish, who had assisted in the escape of a number of British prisoners. From this character evolved Mason's protagonist, Harry Feversham.

From boyhood, the novel tells us, Harry had been regaled by his father with blood-chilling stories of atrocities in the Crimean War. Now, as an adult he is horrified at the prospect of being called to military service in the Sudan. Disgraced when he resigns from his regiment, and subsequently presented by his friends and fiancée with the dreaded "white feather" of cowardice, Harry resolves to travel in disguise to the Sudan to return the feathers to his accusers. Ultimately, his action constitutes what Mason's biographer, Roger Lancelyn Green, describes as "that finest bravery of all which can endure danger and pain in spite of the vivid imagination which urges him to run away" (A. E. W. Mason: The Adventure of a Story-Teller [1952], p. 89). . . .

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