Beau Geste is a 1939 American adventure film starring Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, and Susan Hayward.

Directed and produced by William A. Wellman, the screenplay was adapted by Robert Carson, based on the 1924 novel of the same title by P. C. Wren.

The bugler has vanished, and the commander finds two bodies that are not staged like the rest and a note on one confessing to the theft of a valuable sapphire called the "Blue Water".

All present proclaim their innocence, but first Beau and then Digby depart without warning, each leaving a confession that he committed the robbery.

Legionnaire Rasinoff overhears joking remarks by the Geste brothers, leading him and Markoff to believe that Beau has the gem.

Fearing the sergeant's now-unchecked brutality, Schwartz incites the other men to mutiny the next morning; only Beau, John, and Maris refuse to take part.

Beau dies in his brother's arms after telling him to take one of the letters to Lady Brandon and leave the other, a confession of the robbery, in Markoff's hand.

Digby tricks them into fleeing by sounding a bugle to signal a charge by non-existent Legionnaires, but is killed by a parting shot.

Lady Brandon reads aloud Beau's letter, which reveals that as a child he was hiding in a suit of armor and witnessed her selling the "Blue Water".

Realizing years later she had replaced it with a fake, he had stolen the faux gem to protect her from being found out — his beau geste.

The 1935 movie The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, also starring Gary Cooper, had been banned in Mussolini's Italy for the same reason.