The Charge of the Light Brigade is a 1936 film adaptation based on the poem of the same name by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The film is a fictionalized account of a famously disastrous military maneuver during the Crimean War, executed by British cavalry during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Historically, Lord Cardigan led 673 cavalry men into a valley of death, where Russian artillery fire rained down on the British soldiers from three sides. The film depicts the events leading up to this terrible loss of life with an invented love triangle between two British officers, Major Geoffrey Vickers and his brother Captain Perry Vickers, and the Major's fiancee, Elsa. Errol Flynn plays Major Vickers, while Patric Knowles plays Captain Vickers and Olivia de Havilland plays Elsa. C. Henry Gordon plays Surat Kahn, an Indian rajah who orders a bloody massacre in a British-occupied town. When the famous battle finally happens, the Vickers brothers engage in a quest for revenge against Surat Kahn, as well as finally deciding who will win the hand of Elsa. The Charge of the Light Brigade is a classic of historical storytelling, full of powerful fighting and complex relationships.moreless
