Distributed by Gaumont in France in early 1978, he was once Legion ( March or Die ) , is a production of 1976. This co-production is largely Anglo-Saxon directed by Dick Richards, American filmmaker and author of two feature films like, The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972), a western, and especially Farewell My Lovely (1975 ), a reinterpretation of film noir and Raymond Chandler's world praised by critics. Richards uses a third reflection on the cinema of the past, by replaying a sub-genre well codified, as in Hollywood films in French pre-war film Legionnaire investing adventure film, love, and the epic film of men. The vicissitudes of Legionnaires in Morocco in 1918, evoke the Wild West. Foreign Legion and Moroccan tribes replace blue tunics and Indian tribes. The leader of men, captain of the Foreign Legion (Gene Hackman), is also a former army officer of USA.
Richards, with substantial financial resources, surrounded by a few international stars: Gene Hackman, whose astonishing breakthrough in the 1970s recognized performer of some individualists social breakdown ( Scarecrow ) or disillusioned by the order that they contribute to establish ( French Connection ), Max von Sydow comes from Ingmar Bergman but made a notable appearance in Three Days of the Condor (1974), Catherine Deneuve, French touch distant and elegant, oscillates from one role to another between the cinemas of the world of Luis Bunuel Robert Aldrich (The city Hazards , 1975).
The surprise of the film is the role of handsome legionnaire told Terence Hill spent internationally in film-budget (very) high by My Name is Nobody , just three years ago and true selling point of the film. Hill, who by this movie, thinking rooted in Hollywood, took over from Gary Cooper and Jean Gabin in a role tailor-made. This will be his last dramatic interpretation. The relative failure of the blockbuster Dick Richards puts an end to its voluntary Hollywood career.
The supporting roles are equally treated: Rufus, Marcel Bozzuffi, French actors very "local color" in the Legion, Ian Holm, to name only the best known. Maurice Jarre, composer of the great frescoes by David Lean wrote the music. John Alcott, chief operator of Stanley Kubrick, well known for his scholarly research on lighting the candle in Barry Lyndon (1975) completes to give high gloss film buff-end to the ambitious undertaking by images carefully composed and lit.
Shot mainly in Spain, in the heart of the spaghetti western territories in the provinces of Almeria and Granada, and for a small party in Morocco, Enchanted Legion s' requires, over time, just as both nostalgic homage to the cinema of the 30s and 40s and as testimony of what cinema could still afford to produce and 35 years ago: a conventional imaging, cultured mirror Hollywood dreams lost, for an audience sensitive to the exotic scenery of the powerful film, but contained by well-established codes. Enchanted Legion itself becomes the archetype of a movie over.
Enchanted Legion , narrated by Roland Fougeres CineRevue No. 7, February 16, 1978. The French title of March or Die echoes of Sergio Leone films, in which he borrows a few places and reputations (Terence Hill). 
Morocco in Spain: 140-2054 Baldwin locomotive on the line of rail "Estacion La Calahorra-Mines Alquife "Altiplano Marquesado (Grenada), circa September 1976, three years after the confrontation at the same place, Jack Beauregard with The Wild Bunch ( My Name is Nobody, Tonino Valerii , 1973). A place Memory for Terence Hill and Gene Hackman turn came a few years ago The Scavengers (1971), Don Medford and an air of déjà vu for the viewer. 
Fuerte El Condor around October 1976. 
Fuerte El Condor , around April 1989-1990. Dick Richards recyle Fort El Condor , Llanos del Duque Gérgal (Almeria), restored for the occasion by the English team of Gil Parrondo, designer Oscar winner for Patton, another big blockbuster filmed in Almeria (Franklin J. Shaffner, 1969). The work began five weeks before the shooting almeriense, began September 23, 1976. Enchanted Legion marks the twilight of the prestigious productions in scenery and figuration. The film is jointly 1.33 and 1.85, expected for both the widescreen and already the TV screen, the final outlet and natural exploitation of the film.
Tristana and Trinita: Catherine Deneuve and Terence Hill or the femme fatale and the romantic wanderer. It is not certain that the public Terence Hill in its expectations, has not been upset by this game too seriously, confusing, on stereotypes foreign to the universe of comic Italian actor. 
Max von Sydow in the sacred tomb, indeed reconstituted in the remains of the Alcazaba of Almeria, around September-October 1976. The actor gives a touch of Bergman film of intellectual men. 
Terence Hill, then at the box office rival Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood or Paul Newman. A comic hero transported to the dramatic heroism. 
Django and his gun Legionnaires in uniform: in less than 10 years, Terence Hill movies going broke Ferdinando Baldi ( Django, prepare your coffin , 1967) at the Hollywood epic. 
These sequences are filmed in Morocco, but it breathes like an air film of Little Big Horn ... Enchanted Legion together motion picture film and cinema, working as a game of Russian dolls. Gene Hackman evokes memories in the viewer, in 1976, the figure of Popeye, lucid and disillusioned cop, from French Connection . Curiously, in the wake of March or Die in 1977, Marty Feldman, collaborator and actor Mel Brooks, also transposes the story of Beau Geste in a delirious parody (My Beautiful Legionnaire ), which was to be originally filmed in Almeria, where Feldman, by using a simple trick lies opposite Gary Cooper ...
Sources: Cine Revue
No. 7, February 16, 1978. Jose Marquez
Ubeda, Plato Almeria Cine , Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 2009.
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