The Lost Patrol (RKO) is an account of what happens to twelve members of a British cavalry troop in Mesopotamia in 1915. Arabs, firing from ambush, kill the troop's captain. The rest reach an oasis. The first night, Arabs shoot a sentry, steal the horses. The next morning a cockney soldier climbs a palm tree to get a look at the enemy. He topples down with a bullet in his heart. The sergeant (Victor McLaglen) draws lots, sends two of his men to scout for help. They come back dead, strapped to the backs of horses. A rescue plane lands on the sand; the pilot is shot as he starts toward the trees. By this time Arab snipers, concealed by the dunes, have picked off all but three of the troop. None of the three can fly but Morelli (Wallace Ford) and the sergeant dismount the plane's machine gun, set fire to the plane and get back to the oasis under cover of the smoke. Sanders (Boris Karloff) goes mad and gets his bullet when he is stumbling across the sand with his clothes torn like a prophet's, carrying a cross. Morelli is killed trying to drag him back to safety. The sergeant has the machine gun and when the Arabs, veiled like ghosts, at last dare to come creeping over a ridge of sand toward the oasis, he sits up in the grave he has dug for himself, rakes them all down. He is chuckling at their corpses when the rescue party comes.
The incidents in The Lost Patrol are fictitious. The sober tempo of Director John Ford's narrative gives them the character of fact. Nothing is dramatized except the presence of Death. The only suspense is that of counting very slowly toward a dozen. No more is necessary to make the picture as sharp and alarming as the crack of a rifle. Best shot: a last hooded Arab following his dead companions into the oasis.
Bolero (Paramount). Set in the 1910s, this picture features Maurice Ravel's famed composition (written in 1928), calls a cabaret a night club, omits the maxixes and bunny-hugs of the period in favor of jazz steps and a fan dance by Sally Rand. A Belgian-born coal miner named Raoul (George Raft) becomes a dancer. As he rises in the world, he casts off partner after partner because they try to mix pleasure and business. He acquires an able partner in Helen (Carole Lombard), but loses her when he talks of going to war as a good publicity stunt. When Raoul returns with a bad heart, Helen has married another man. She rejoins Raoul long enough to help him accomplish his great ambition— a "sensational" dance to the Bolero. Then the heart behaves as expected.
Bolero is supposed to resemble the life of the late Dancer Maurice Mouvet. George Raft dances capably. His costume and appearance are faintly suggestive of the late Rudolph Valentino. With a straight face he recites such lines as: "I trust your marriage has turned out happy." Poor shot: Raft trying to look moved beside his father's grave.
It Happened One Night (Columbia) contains the material of many a recent picture: the brash, whiskey-drinking newshawk (Clark Gable); the girl (Claudette Colbert) whose father thinks she has been kidnapped; the Florida-New York bus on which they are riding North together—the girl to join her recently-acquired socialite husband of whom her father disapproves, the reporter to get the story of her escapade.