Ronald Colman stars in epic Beau Geste, with Rodney Sauer directing his live chamber orchestra score

After reading P. C. Wren’s new novel Beau Geste, Irish American film director Herbert Brenon hurried to Jesse Lasky’s office at Paramount Pictures to pitch a film adaptation. Lasky gave Brenon free rein and resources to create a film that matches the novel’s epic scope. The story centers on the bond among three English brothers (played by Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, and Ralph Forbes) whose lives are disrupted by the disappearance of a precious family heirloom, leading them to the French Foreign Legion and the battlefields of North Africa. The film’s exteriors were shot on location in California’s Imperial Dunes, its vast white sands standing in for the Sahara. Silent film music specialist Rodney Sauer will lead a quintet in a newly compiled score created for the film, combining period music with live performance to heighten its romance, suspense, and grandeur.