Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a 1962 American drama film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Lukas, Yvette Mimieux, Karl Boehm and Paul Henreid. It is loosely based on the 1916 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which had been filmed in 1921 with Rudolph Valentino. Unlike the first film, it was a critical and commercial disaster, which contributed greatly to the financial problems of MGM. Plot In 1936, Madariaga is the 80-year-old patriarch of a cattle ranch in Argentina. His two grandsons are Julio, whose father Marcelo is French, and Heinrich, whose father Karl is German. When Heinrich returns home from studying in Germany to reveal he has become a Nazi, Madariaga slaps him and predicts that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Conquest, War, Pestilence, and Death) will soon devastate the earth. He runs outside into a storm with visions of the four horsemen and then dies in Julio's arms. In 1938, Julio goes to Paris with his family and befriends Marcelo's anti-Nazi friend Etienne Laurier. Julio falls in love with Laurier's wife, Marguerite, and becomes her lover after war breaks out and Laurier is sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. He takes advantage of his status as a neutral to live a pleasant life with Marguerite in German-occupied Paris, where his cousin Heinrich is an important official in the SS. When Marguerite becomes the object of German General von Kleig's lust, Julio - aided by Heinrich (it being the last time they are on good terms) - defies him and incurs his personal enmity. Julio's younger sister Chi Chi becomes active in the French resistance and makes Julio uncomfortable about his own neutrality. Laurier is released from prison an apparently broken man, and Marguerite leaves Julio to care for him. When Julio discovers that Laurier is an important figure in the resistance, he joins it as well. Eventually, both Chi Chi and Laurier are tortured and murdered by the Gestapo, and Laurier reveals to von Kleig that Julio is working for the resistance and on an important mission: guiding Allied bombers to destroy a Nazi headquarters in Normandy. Heinrich, realizing that Julio is probably a French agent, captures him just as the bombs are falling on them and kill both.