Sergeant X of the Foreign Legion

1960

A remake and rewriting by director Bernard Borderie and scripters of a well-made 1932 film, this routine French drama seems a little outdated. The story has changed from a Russian officer who returns home from the war to find his wife has remarried, to a former paratrooper who tries to drive a stolen truck back from Morocco and suffers an accident -- and the same fate as the Russian. As a result of his injuries and the subsequent delay, the ex-military man is unable to get home as scheduled, and the woman he loves decides that he has left her. Once she "realizes" that supposed truth, she decides to marry her boss. As in the earlier film, one of the protagonists ends up in the French Foreign Legion and all three head toward a fateful meeting in a North African desert.