''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'' is a 1962 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

directed by

Vincente Minnelli Vincente Minnelli (born Lester Anthony Minnelli; February 28, 1903 – July 25, 1986) was an American stage director and film director. He directed the classic movie musicals '' Meet Me in St. Louis'' (1944), '' An American in Paris'' (1951), ' ...

and starring

Glenn Ford Gwyllyn Samuel Newton "Glenn" Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-American actor who often portrayed ordinary men in unusual circumstances. Ford was most prominent during Hollywood's Golden Age as one of the biggest box-offi ...

, Ingrid Thulin,

Charles Boyer Charles Boyer (; 28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American fi ...

, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Lukas,

Yvette Mimieux Yvette Carmen Mimieux (January 8, 1942 – January 18, 2022) was an American film and television actress. Her breakout role was in '' The Time Machine'' (1960). She was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards during her acting career. Early li ...

Karl Boehm Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austrian ...

and Paul Henreid. It is loosely based on the 1916 novel by

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (, 29 January 1867 – 28 January 1928) was a journalist, politician and bestselling Spanish novelist in various genres whose most widespread and lasting fame in the English-speaking world is from Hollywood films that were ...

, which had been filmed in 1921 with

Rudolph Valentino Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino and nicknamed The Latin Lover, was an Italian actor based in the United States who starred ...

. Unlike the first film, it was a critical and commercial disaster, which contributed greatly to the financial problems of MGM.

Plot

In 1936, Madariaga is the 80-year-old patriarch of a cattle ranch in Argentina. His two grandsons are Julio, whose father Marcelo is French, and Heinrich, whose father Karl is German. When Heinrich returns home from studying in Germany to reveal he has become a Nazi, Madariaga slaps him and predicts that the

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Christian scriptures, first appearing in the Book of Revelation, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos. Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand t ...

(Conquest, War, Pestilence, and Death) will soon devastate the earth. He runs outside into a storm with visions of the four horsemen and then dies in Julio's arms. In 1938, Julio goes to Paris with his family and befriends Marcelo's anti-Nazi friend Etienne Laurier. Julio falls in love with Laurier's wife, Marguerite, and becomes her lover after war breaks out and Laurier is sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. He takes advantage of his status as a neutral to live a pleasant life with Marguerite in German-occupied Paris, where his cousin Heinrich is an important official in the SS. When Marguerite becomes the object of German General von Kleig's lust, Julio defies him and incurs his personal enmity. Julio's younger sister Chi Chi becomes active in the French resistance and makes Julio uncomfortable about his own neutrality. Laurier is released from prison an apparently-broken man, and Marguerite leaves Julio to care for him. When Julio discovers that Laurier is an important figure in the resistance, he joins it as well. Eventually, both Chi Chi and Laurier are tortured and murdered by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

, and Laurier reveals to von Kleig that Julio is working for the resistance and on an important mission: guiding Allied bombers to destroy a Nazi headquarters in Normandy. Heinrich, realizing that Julio is probably a French agent, captures him just as the bombs are falling on them and kill both. The final scene, the most important one in the film, is missing from several versions shown. In it, the grandchildren's parents listen helplessly on the telephone as the deaths happen. The final words are from one set of parents to another: "Our children have killed each other." In other prints, the film ends with the four horsemen riding on to create future havoc for other generations.

Cast

Production

Development

The silent film rights to the original story had been purchased by Metro in 1918 for $190,000. There had been discussions by MGM about remaking the film before the American copyright expired in 1946. The following year MGM producer Sam Marx announced the studio might remake the film as a vehicle for

Ricardo Montalbán Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG (; ; November 25, 1920 – January 14, 2009) was a Mexican and American film and television actor. Montalbán's career spanned seven decades, during which he became known for performances in a var ...

, and if they did, the story would be updated to World War II. Early in 1958, MGM set about clarifying the copyright situation. It had recently authorized a remake of ''Ben-Hur'', which seemed to be a phenomenal success, and it was looking for other old MGM properties to remake. It obtained the necessary rights and announced they would make the movie in June 1958. Julian Blaustein was assigned as producer.

Scripting

Blaustein announced the story would be updated from World War I to World War II:

The driving force of the book is of love among men instead of hatred. I don't think it can be said often enough that such love is indispensable for all of us if we are to have any future. If a motion picture can dramatize such a theme entertainingly then the motion picture may make a small contribution to peace in the world. It certainly impresses me as being worth the try.... The Paris of the occupation, the births of the resistance movements have never been thoroughly explored on the screen to my mind. I'm not interested in trying to recreate the shooting war. That's almost too difficult to realistically do on the screen today. What I want to put on screen is the atmosphere, so that when you sit in the theatre you will feel the hope and frustration of people struggling against invasion and may realize no man is an island.

Robert Ardrey Robert Ardrey (October 16, 1908 – January 14, 1980) was an American playwright, screenwriter and science writer perhaps best known for ''The Territorial Imperative'' (1966). After a Broadway and Hollywood career, he returned to his academic tr ...

wrote the initial script. The movie was, along with a remake of '' Cimarron'', going to be one of MGM's big films for 1960. MGM allocated a budget of $4 million and

to direct it. He said he had doubts about relocating the time period and wanted it set back in World War I, but the studio was insistent. Filming was pushed back due to the actors strike in 1960. Minnelli later claimed that he was "drafted" into making the movie, and was rushed into production before he was ready because MGM had a start date. However he managed to get the head of production,

Sol Siegel Sol C. Siegel (March 30, 1903 – December 29, 1982) was an American film producer. Two of the numerous films he produced, ''A Letter to Three Wives'' (1949) and '' Three Coins in the Fountain'' (1954), were nominated for the Academy Award for B ...

, to arrange for the script to be rewritten in order to reflect the German occupation of Paris. Because Robert Ardrey was busy, MGM hired

John Gay John Gay (30 June 1685 – 4 December 1732) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for '' The Beggar's Opera'' (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly P ...

to do rewrites of an outline prepared by Minnelli, which showed the weaknesses as he saw them. "Gay proved to be an enormous help," wrote Minnelli later. "The script – with the dreadful World War II setting – took shape. But I never justified the updating in my mind."Minnelli p 340 Pre-production commenced in Paris. Minnelli wrote he flew back to the US and tried to talk the studio into changing the time period once again, but it refused. "I began to believe I was the victim of a studio set up," he wrote.

Casting

Early contenders for the male lead, the part originally played by

, were MGM contractee George Hamilton, and

Maximilian Schell Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film '' Judgment at Nuremberg'', ...

. Minnelli said that he wanted

Alain Delon Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (; born 8 November 1935) is a French actor and filmmaker. He was one of Europe's most prominent actors and screen sex symbols in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In 1985, he won the César Award for Best Actor for h ...

for the starring role and met with the young actor in Rome, but the producers did not feel that he was well enough known. In June 1960, it was announced that

, who had a long relationship with MGM and had recently signed a new contract with the studio, would play the lead role. Minnelli later reflected, "There I was, stuck with a story I didn't want to do, with a leading actor who lacked the brashness and impulsiveness I associated with his part. I wanted new challenges but I didn't think they'd be that challenging." However, he said that the rest of the cast "was as brilliant as it was international."

was cast in the ingenue part with

and Claude Dauphin in support, and

Ava Gardner Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her perform ...

in the female lead, the part played by

Alice Terry Alice Frances Taaffe (July 24, 1899 – December 22, 1987), known professionally as Alice Terry, was an American film actress and director. She began her career during the silent film era, appearing in thirty-nine films between 1916 and 1 ...

in the 1921 film. Eventually Gardner dropped out and Ingrid Thulin, best known for '' Wild Strawberries'', stepped in. The studio wanted

Horst Buchholz Horst Werner Buchholz (4 December 1933 – 3 March 2003) was a German actor who appeared in more than 60 feature films from 1951 to 2002. During his youth, he was sometimes called "the German James Dean". He is perhaps best known in English- ...

to play the young German son but he was unable to do it because of his commitment to make '' Fanny'' (1961) and so Karlheinz Böhm instead was hired. Ford was paired with an older actress, Ingrid Thulin, which made both main roles much older than the book and the 1921 film characters. That gave more credibility to their relationship than a

May–December romance Concepts of age disparity in sexual relationships, including what defines an age disparity, have developed over time and vary among societies. Differences in age preferences for mates can stem from partner availability, gender roles, and evoluti ...

would have. Although Thulin spoke English well, she was dubbed by

Angela Lansbury Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American film, stage, and television actress. Her career spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, and her work received a great deal ...

Shooting

Minnelli later wrote that as he was unhappy with the story he decided to make the film at least as "stunning visually as I could make it. The flaws in the story might be overlooked. Some of my previous pictures hadn't held much hope in the beginning, but they'd been saved because I'd had some leeway in the writing. But I didn't have this freedom on ''Four Horsemen''. It would be interesting to see what could be accomplished." Minnelli decided to make the Four Horsemen an integral part of the story, which would be designed by Tony Duquette as a set of andirons riding the sky parallel to the main action. He used red as "a dominating color, culminating in a red gel over the newsreels, which would be shown in a documentary way to point up the devastation of the war and the insensitivity of the principal actors in taking scant notice of it." Filming started in Paris on 17 October. It proved difficult because of riots from the situation in Algeria and because of the local reluctance to recreate scenes from the Occupation. It was decided to film the bulk of the movie in Hollywood instead. Saul Bass spent months in 1961, creating four historical newsreel montages, "Sports Palace," "Warsaw," "Rotterdam," "La Martinique," which were to be interspersed throughout the story, but except for brief shots, the montages were removed in the final cut. Bass later reused some of the edits for ''The Victors,'' for which he created a prologue and titles. One of the most famous scenes of the 1921 movie involved Rudolph Valentino dancing the tango. However the scene was not in the novel, and it was decided not to have a similar scene in the remake. Ingrid Thulin later reflected on filming:

It was an interesting experience. I could not conform to their standards of beauty. I tried.... After the first few rushes it was obvious that it
he film He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
would turn out badly. Yet they went right on. Perhaps they couldn't convince themselves that all that money would end in disaster. I really did want to be as beautiful as they wanted. It was terribly difficult. Then I worked very hard to dub the dialogue but they kept changing lines to things I couldn't pronounce. So they had to dub in another voice.

MGM was impressed by the performance of Boehm and signed him to a contract by putting him in such films as '' Come Fly with Me'' and ''

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm ''The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm'' is a 1962 American fantasy film directed by Henry Levin and George Pal. The latter was the producer and also in charge of the stop motion animation. The film was one of the highest-grossing films of ...

''.

Post-production

The movie spent a considerable amount of time in post-production, which caused its budget to increase further. This, combined with the massive cost overruns of '' Lady L'', which had been postponed, and the remake of ''

Mutiny on the Bounty The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel occurred in the South Pacific Ocean on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by acting-Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set h ...

'', as well as the massive failures of '' Cimarron'', ''Mutiny on the Bounty'', and this film, led to the resignation of Sol C. Siegel, MGM's head of production.

Reception

The film had its world premiere on February 7, 1962 at Loew's Capitol Theatre in Washington, DC.

Box office

The film grossed $26,000 in its first week in Washington, DC. MGM had become aware by April that the film would not recoup its cost and started to write off its losses. Ultimately the movie earned $1,600,000 in

theatrical rental A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is fre ...

s in the US and Canada and $2,500,000 overseas. When costs of prints and advertising were added, the studio recorded a loss of $5,853,000.

Critical

It was compared very unfavorably to the famous 1921 version, which had propelled

to superstardom. Ford, with many films behind him, was not the unknown that Valentino was when he appeared in the 1921 film. Ford, 46, also had the disadvantage of trying to reprise a role that Valentino had played when he was 26. Critics also considered Ford severely miscast as a Latin lover, who in their minds should have been played by someone much younger. The ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'' wrote the filmmakers "have pulled it off. The new 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' restores the pleasure there can be in seeing a good story well told on the screen." Minnelli said that the movie received better reviews in Europe and it influenced the look of '' The Damned'', ''

The Conformist ''The Conformist'' (''Il conformista'') is a novel by Alberto Moravia published in 1951, which details the life and desire for normality of a government official during Italy's fascist period. It is also known for the 1970 film adaptation by B ...

'' and '' The Garden of the Finzi Continis''.

Soundtrack

André Previn André George Previn (; born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-American pianist, composer, and conductor. His career had three major genres: Hollywood films, jazz, and classical music. In each he achieved ...

composed the soundtrack score, the main theme of which

Alan Alan may refer to: People *Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname * Alan (given name), an English given name **List of people with given name Alan ''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.'' * ...

and

Marilyn Bergman Alan Bergman (born September 11, 1925) and Marilyn Keith Bergman (November 10, 1928 – January 8, 2022) were an American songwriting duo. Married from 1958 until Marilyn's death, together they wrote music and lyrics for numerous celebrated telev ...

later adapted and wrote lyrics for. The resulting song, "More in Love with You", was recorded by

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers awar ...

for '' The Movie Album'' (2003).

Comic book adaptation

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

Four Color ''Four Color'', also known as ''Four Color Comics'' and ''Dell Four Color'', was an American comic book anthology series published by Dell Comics between 1939 and 1962. The title is a reference to the four basic colors used when printing comic ...

#1250 (1961)

Bibliography

* Minnelli, Vincent & Harold Acre, ''I Remember It Well''; Samuel French, 1975.

References

External links

* * *
Review of film
at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (Film) 1960s war drama films 1962 films Films scored by André Previn Films directed by Vincente Minnelli Films with screenplays by Robert Ardrey Films with screenplays by John Gay (screenwriter) Films about the French Resistance Films based on works by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Films set in Argentina Films set in Paris Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Remakes of American films Sound film remakes of silent films Films adapted into comics 1960s political drama films Anti-war films about World War II Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in popular culture 1962 drama films CinemaScope films 1960s English-language films