The Rebel Son (1938)

Now you do have to suspend belief a bit with this as neither Roger Livesey nor Anthony Bushell make for especially convincing Cossacks, but once the brothers “Peter” and “Andrew” (not “Andrei”) return from their educational sojourn to Kiev, the scene is swiftly set for a mixture of betrayal, rebellion and romance. The Poles are in charge and it’s the prince “Zamnitsky” (Frederick Culley) who commands these unruly serfs, before his daughter “Marina” (Patricia Roc) attracts the attention of “Peter” who quickly forgets all his familial and tribal loyalties and soon has his father “Taras” (a positively exuberant Harry Baur) in conniptions that could induce a double hernia, if the dancing didn’t do that first! Despite the plentiful and unconvincingly plummy English characterisations on display - Bernard Miles as a Pole is a tough ask, I still quite enjoyed this decently paced adventure story. It manages to keep most of the slushy stuff under wraps as the story gathers pace with plenty of cannon and musket balls flying; some lively cultural stereotyping and quite a lot of decent action photography as the battle lines ebb and flow. Roc does fine as the smouldering princess without many lines, and if you just sit back and imagine the rousing score from Franz Waxman’s 1962 version accompanying this, then you will probably find it’s nowhere near as bad in the end as the start suggests it might be.