Martha Wilcox Robert Taylor comes alive when he falls in love with Margaret Sullavan. Prior to this he was a zombie drifting through life. To a certain degree you could say that about Sullavan, but she looks and sounds the same in more or less every film she's in.The stand out performance comes from Franchot Tone. He is definitely a good actor with a good voice and good lines, but not a leading actor. He carries the film alongside and compensates for Taylor's dull moments. He enables us to understand Taylor better which is down to a combination of good writing and good acting. In some ways this is more of an actor's film rather than an entertaining film for audiences because the focus is on performances like that delivered by Tone.

drystyx This is a drama about three German veterans of the first world war, comrades who open up a mechanic shop, and are genuine friends to each other.A woman enters the picture, and she is quickly adopted into their little family as a love interest of one. The other two are not ready for romance, and have other things on their minds, but they are very happy for their friend.There is a lot of give and take in this drama. It moves relatively well for a drama. It isn't nearly as slow paced as most dramas. And the banter between the characters is usually very witty on a realistic scale.While the dialog is well done, there is a lot of preaching and a lot of predictability in this. We are rarely surprised, and that may not be a bad thing. However, there is a bit too much preaching in the form of the Franchot Tone character, who is obviously the spokesman for the writer.It's good to see Robert Taylor play a role of a mature minded man instead of the cliché bad guys gone good he played later. Ironic that his most mature role came so early in his career.There are flashes of good cinema here, especially at the end. It won't bowl you over, but it won't make you groan. It's somewhere in between. Give and take.

pounders-1 My mother, a movie fan who loved "women's pictures" used to say nobody could cry as beautifully and elegantly as M.S. who both cried and gave audiences a chance to weep in many films. The tragic ending for the love triangle in this movie, must be seen to be believed. Margaret's character is in a hospital room with a balcony(?!!) and she decides she wants to perish while she's young and beautiful, so she goes to the window and gives herself a fatal chill, then collapses in Robert Taylor's arms, all while wearing an ethereal white dress...they don't make them like that anymore.But I would recommend this film especially to W Scott Fitzgerald fans,as they will enjoy his work on the screenplay.

bkoganbing Three Comrades, a story of three men and the girl who marries one of them and the bleak future they face in post World War I Germany, is a tender a touching story brought to the screen by some great talents. You can't do too much better than an Erich Maris Remarque novel and a screenplay by none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald. The whole thing is directed by Frank Borzage who is a master at directing tender romances.Erich Maria Remarque is better known for writing All Quiet on the Western Front. That story is about a group of young men who enlist in the German Army in World War I and the illusions that are quickly shattered with military service at the Western Front. Three Comrades essentially picks up where All Quiet on the Western Front leaves off. The characters played by Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, and Robert Young could easily be those same kids grown up now, three survivors of those who marched to war in 1914-1915.These are working class people who just want to get back to civilian life. They want to go in business together, a car repair garage seems the thing, taking advantage of something useful the military taught them. All react differently to the war. Robert Taylor finds the girl of his dreams in Margaret Sullavan and their love makes them both forget or at least put on the back burner, the horror of World War I. Robert Young is an idealist who still looks for a cause to believe in and finds it in some of the left wing parties of the Weimar Republic. Franchot Tone acts like an older brother figure to both Taylor and Young. He's cynical, but not bitter. He wants a life of peace, but as we see in the film, he's quite capable of using his military training to exact some revenge. Tone's performance in fact is the best in the film.I won't say more, except that for two of the protagonists things end tragically. For which two, buy or rent the film. The Nazis are there also, their movement is just getting started. In 1938 with the Nazis in power in Germany, the audience knew what the two surviving protagonists did not, that their worst fears are realized.As we see the two survivors, accompanied by the ghostly apparitions of their dead comrades, the future is bleak and uncertain. The audience hopes that both survivors are in a place of refuge and peace, as unlikely as that might be.