Review of La bandera

A loose and baggy French orientalist romance, in which tough guy Pierre Gillieth (Jean Gabin) flees Paris after killing a man in the midst of a violent disagreement, winds up in Barcelona, where he decides to join Spain's Foreign Legion. He and a bunch of other colourful guys do so, and wind up somewhere in North Africa, wearing the tasseled caps of Spanish soldiers and hanging out in an exotic bar where the beautiful dancer Aisha (Annabella) and Gillieth fall in love instantaneously and they marry. She's sparky and irrepressible and he's solid and happy, until the scarily jolly bad guy, actually a cop, shows up and disturbs the escape plan. Fortunately, the Legion needs 24 volunteers to hold off an uprising, and nobody is expected to survive, and of course both Gillieth and the cop go, and everybody dies except the two of them, and just as the relief arrives, Gillieth takes the last bullet, leaving the cop, who has relented, to declare his friend's heroism and deliver the bad news to Aisha, who has a close-up in which her huge eyes fill with tears and her lips tremble and she turns away. The film is mostly awful, a nasty piece of European colonialism, complete with a merciless and faceless enemy. The scenery is interesting, the dialogue mostly tepid, Gabin predictable, leaving only Annabella to stand out, with her exotic dances and her filmy gowns and her enchanting smile for Gabin and the curious henna markings on her forehead and chin.