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Lost Command (Les Centurions)

Movie · 1966 · 15 people

Released in 1966, Lost Command was co-produced by France and the United States as a war drama. It also goes by its French title, Les Centurions. Mark Robson both directed and produced it.

The story traces French paratrooper units in the 1950s. The men first clash with Viet Minh guerrillas in French Indochina, then move on to Algeria, where they fight the local resistance during the war of independence. The leading cast includes Anthony Quinn, Alain Delon, George Segal, Michèle Morgan, Maurice Ronet and Claudia Cardinale, with Grégoire Aslan, Jean Servais, Jacques Marin, George Rigaud and Aldo Sambrell among the players.

Nelson Gidding wrote the screenplay. Its source is the novel by Jean Lartéguy, a French journalist and former soldier: Les Centurions, a 1960 best seller, which Gidding adapted loosely for the screen. Franz Waxman composed the music, and Columbia Pictures made the film.

DirectorMark Robson
Production companyColumbia Pictures

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Cast

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Claudia Cardinale Claudia Cardinale Actor · died at 87 Aisha Aldo Sambrell Aldo Sambrell Film actor · died at 79 Ibrahim Anthony Quinn Alain Delon George Segal Michèle Morgan Maurice Ronet Grégoire Aslan Jean Servais Jacques Marin Burt Kwouk Félix de Pomés Georges Rigaud Jean-Claude Bercq Maurice Sarfati

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Through different eyes

AI-assisted editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives. They are not reader reviews; those are below.

Action & Thriller Fan Puts pace, tension and set pieces first; little patience for slow drama.

Paratrooper units, two separate fronts from Indochina to Algeria, and names like Anthony Quinn and Alain Delon: all the makings of a solid war film. The clashes with guerrillas keep the pace lively. But the film runs long, and the pace drops in places as it catches its breath between fronts. Watch it for the battle scenes, knowing the stretches between fronts are slow.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

Lost Command tells France's colonial wars through the eyes of the colonial power's own soldiers, and that point of view is what to keep in mind when watching it today. The story runs from the defeat in Indochina to the war of independence in Algeria, so we follow two stages of an empire's decline. Within this frame the Algerian resistance mostly remains the other side, with little room for its own story. The source, a novel by the journalist and former soldier Jean Lartéguy, helps explain that perspective. Made in the mid-sixties, while the war was still fresh, the film also works as a document of its own time's attitude.

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Directed and produced by Mark Robson, the film bears the marks of a Franco-American co-production in every frame: a French subject, a French novel, a story told in English and an international star cast. That mix gives it a broad scale but weakens the sense that the actors inhabit the same world. Nelson Gidding's loose adaptation of the novel pulls the two fronts into one structure, yet the feeling of a film split in two never fully goes away. Franz Waxman's score stays true to the classic Hollywood war-film mold. Solid by the standards of the big productions of its day, but a safe piece of work rather than a bold one.

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