March or Die *** (1977, Gene Hackman, Terence Hill, Catherine Deneuve, Max von Sydow, Ian Holm) – Classic Movie Review 7636

Director Dick Richards’s ambitious, meticulously made 1977 old-style adventure movie March or Die stars Gene Hackman, who takes top billing as troubled American French Foreign Legion veteran Major William Foster in a tale that might have worked in the Thirties or Forties but looks out of place in the late Seventies.

Producer Lew Grade assembles a cast of high-grade actors, playing assorted characters who find themselves being menaced by angry Arab tribesmen in a Foreign Legion fort after the end of World War One as Major Foster’s unit tries to protect an archaeological dig, that has unearthed a sacred Arab burial site.

The film is good looking, thanks to the distinguished cinematography in Technicolor by John Alcott, and its scale is impressive, thanks to the filming at the Tabernas Desert, in Almeria, Spain, and the reuse of the fort built for El Condor in 1970. The fort turns out to be one of the film’s stars.

The director and his actors try hard and achieve some degree of success, with Hackman and Terence Hill (as charming thieving rogue Marco Segrain) outstanding. But there is not really enough oomph to carry the plot along and, apart from the highlight epic climactic battle at the fort, it seems a bit of a long march to the final credits.

It is one of the era’s awkward international puddings where Sweden’s Max von Sydow gets to play a Frenchman, François Marneau, and Britain’s Ian Holm plays an Arab leader, El Krim.

Also in the cast are Catherine Deneuve, Marcel Bozzuffi, Jack O’Halloran, Rufus, André Penvern, Paul Sherman, Vernon Dobtcheff, Marne Maitland, Luigi [Gigi] Bonos, Jean Champion, Walter Gotell, Paul Antrim, Guy Deghy, Lila Kedrova, Wolf Kahler and Matthias Hell.

On a budget of $9,000,000, it grossed only $1,000,000 in the US.

March or Die is directed by Dick Richards, 107 minutes, is made by Sir Lew Grade and Associated General Films, is released by Columbia Pictures, is written by David Zelag Goodman, from a story by Dick Richards and David Zelag Goodman, is shot in Technicolor by John Alcott, produced by Lew Grade, Dick Richards and Jerry Bruckheimer, scored by Maurice Jarre and designed by Gil Parrondo.

There is also some filming in Madrid; La Calahorra, Granada; Morocco; Imperial County, California; and Yuma, Arizona.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7636

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