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Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe
Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Richard Thorpe
Source: Amazon streaming video

Ivanhoe

In 1814 the poet Walter Scott began publishing his Waverly novels of recent Scottish history, before switching, with Ivanhoe in 1820, to the Medieval era and the history of England, co-inventing (along with Jane Porter) the modern genre of the historical adventure novel in the process. Ivanhoe was a landmark in other ways as well, for its sympathetic treatment of Jews in Western societies, for establishing the character and tone of our modern version of Robin Hood, and for promoting the Medieval background as a setting for adventure tales, still as popular today in the 21st century as Scott made them in the 19th. (That’s right: no Ivanhoe, no Game of Thrones.)

This blockbuster 1952 MGM film was also something of a landmark: its success made movies of knights in shining armor a Hollywood staple for years to come, it brought Scott’s sympathy for the plight of the Jews undimmed to the big screen, and it launched Elizabeth Taylor to the heights of stardom. Its titular hero, however, is another Taylor, Robert, in the rôle of Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a knight in the service of King Richard the Lion-Hearted newly returned from the Crusades. Richard has been imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, and Ivanhoe has vowed to raise the money for his ransom, and to fight for the Saxons against Prince John and Norman oppression while he’s at it. As if that weren’t enough, he also wants to marry the Lady Rowena (Joan Fontaine), but to do that he’ll have to regain the lost favor of his fierce Saxon father, Sir Cedric (Finlay Currie, with an amazing head of hair). To do all this Ivanhoe must win the Big Tournament, but he can’t enter without money to buy horse and gear—which is how he meets Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor), the daughter of a moneylender. Do sparks fly? Yes, they do.

Of course, a hero is only as good as his villains, and Ivanhoe has some dangerous foes in Prince John (the wolfish, sneering Guy Rolfe) and the foremost of the Norman knights, the arrogant Bois-Guilbert—played by George Sanders, and now you know we’re in for a good time! The movie was filmed in and among the castles of Scotland, so the scenery is fabulous, and the castle interiors are properly cramped, stony, and asymmetrical. Some of the weapons are wrong for the period, but the knights’ armor is right, suits and coifs of chainmail rather than the plate armor of later times. The film is bookended by two knightly tournament scenes, both classic in their way, but they’re outdone in the middle by the exciting siege and assault on a castle, when the Saxons, led by Robin Hood (Harold Warrender), finally rise against the Normans. If you’ve ever looked at a Medieval castle and wondered how the devil attackers could get across a moat and up a sheer wall in the face of bolts and boulders, Ivanhoe shows you how.

The movie’s not without flaws: except for a few weak jokes from Wamba, Ivanhoe’s jester-turned-squire, it’s a humorless affair, and here and there it drags a bit. Robert Taylor looks the part but his acting is rather dry and stiff, and the same can be said of Joan Fontaine. Of the leads in the love triangle, only Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca the Jewess really shines, almost literally; when she’s onscreen you can’t look away. And it’s not just because she’s stunning, she’s also far and away the best actor in the picture. Only Sanders comes close: after Bois-Guilbert loses his black villain’s heart at first sight of Rebecca, he’s conflicted at every turn, and never sure of himself again. Additional kudos must be paid to Felix Aylmer for his fine performance as the Jewish patriarch Isaac, and to Miklós Rósza for the rousing score, one of his best. A whole series of Medieval movie epics will follow in the wake of Ivanhoe, but few will be as good.

By |2018-01-02T21:04:26-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Ivanhoe
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Iron Mask

The Iron Mask
Rating: *****
Origin: USA, 1929
Director: Allan Dwan
Source: Kino Video DVD

The Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask is the conclusion of Alexandre Dumas’s long tale of d’Artagnan and company that began a million words earlier with The Three Musketeers. Here all the characters are thirty years older than in that first story, which makes it a fine valedictory for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s last silent swashbuckler. Fairbanks reprises his rôle as d’Artagnan, as do many other members of the cast of the 1921 Three Musketeers, with the exception of Eugene Pallette, who’d grown too portly to play Aramis, and was replaced by Gino Corrado. (We’ll next see Pallette as Friar Tuck in the 1938 Errol Flynn Robin Hood.)

The story, involving young King Louis XIV and his imprisoned identical twin brother, is one of Dumas’s greatest tales, exceeded only by The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers itself. Fairbanks, who wrote the screenplay, wisely tacked on an extended prologue set back when the Inseparables were all still musketeers to remind the audience of their characters and camaraderie. This adds some jolly roistering to what is otherwise a relatively somber story, and incorporates elements from the latter half of the first novel that didn’t appear in the 1921 adaptation.

The second half of The Iron Mask is more faithful to the spirit of Dumas’s novel than it is to the details of its plot, but even to this Dumas fanboy, Fairbanks’s deviations make sense from the cinematic standpoint. We still get secret passages, a dark conspiracy to replace King Louis XIV, and his ultimate salvation thanks to d’Artagnan’s courage and unswerving loyalty. The pacing of the film never flags or falters, the acting is consistently solid, and it’s gorgeous to look at. As noted in the opening credits, “This entire production was under the supervision of Maurice Leloir,” the veteran French artist who was the most celebrated of the many illustrators of The Three Musketeers, and an expert on the period. The costumes and sets, therefore, are visually sumptuous and historically impeccable. A fine production in every way. Watch for Nigel de Brulier reprising his rôle as the domineering Cardinal Richlelieu, and totally nailing it.

By |2018-02-11T17:33:21-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Iron Mask
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If I Were King

If I Were King
Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1938
Director: Frank Lloyd
Source: Universal Vault Series DVD

If I were King

Justin Huntly McCarthy’s 1901 novel romanticizing the life of French poet and petty criminal François Villon (1432-1463) was so popular, it spawned a play, an operetta, a 1920 silent film, and was the uncredited source material for John Barrymore’s The Beloved Rogue (1927). Paramount decided to revive it as a starring vehicle for Ronald Colman following his success with The Prisoner of Zenda. It was intended to be a top-of-the-line prestige picture, no expense spared, and they hired enfant terrible Preston Sturges to write the screenplay. This was an inspired choice, and his script for the film was one of Sturges’s favorites. Much of Villon’s poetry in the film was translated from French by Sturges himself.

It’s midwinter in the mid-fifteenth century, in Paris under siege by the Burgundians. Villon (Colman) is being pursued by the city watch for thieving, and goes to ground in the rectory of the priest who raised him. The priest drags the abashed but unrepentant poet into the church to pray for his sins, but his attention is diverted by a beautiful penitent, Katherine de Vaucelles (Francis Dee). He falls in love at first sight, and writes a poem for her on the spot, an act that persuades her to be his alibi when the city watch catches up to him.

We follow Katherine back to the palace where, after a little more exposition, we’re introduced to King Louis XI, and OHMYGOD it’s Basil Rathbone, barely recognizable as he completely inhabits the role of that fearful, cunning, cackling, conniving, but ever-brilliant monarch. No wonder Rathbone was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for it.

There’s no tale about Louis XI that isn’t about plots, treachery, and betrayal, and that’s where this one goes immediately. King Louis, investigating a conspiracy while incognito, gets embroiled in a situation that Villon accidentally gets him out of—by killing the Constable (i.e., head general) of France. So Louis, for wily and devious Reasons of State, appoints Villon the new Constable.

Hilarity ensues. And it’s time to talk about Ronald Colman’s performance, as Villon and as the impostor Constable of France. At the beginning of the film, Colman’s Villon is high-strung, voluble, and twitchy, as if suffering from delirium tremens, but as soon as he falls in love with Katherine he begins to be more upright and serene, and once Louis appoints him Constable he becomes suave and urbane—Rudolf Rassendyll, basically. It’s not really a very convincing transformation, but Colman is so charming and clearly having such fun it’s better to just go along and enjoy it. Sturges updated McCarthy’s old stage play by leaving its hoary clichés intact but giving it witty, self-aware dialogue that enables Colman to mock the source material and bring the audience in on the joke. He doesn’t quite break the fourth wall and actually wink at the viewer, but it’s awfully close.

Watch for one of the best castle dungeons in a genre full of them, Francis Dee’s amazing two-and-a-half-foot tall pointed wimple, and her cool sedan chair suspended between two horses, something I’d never seen before. But really, Rathbone’s performance is reason enough to watch this film, and if you’re a fan, it’s worth seeking it out just for that.

By |2018-01-02T21:04:26-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on If I Were King
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Henry V

Henry V
Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: UK, 1944
Director: Laurence Olivier
Source: Criterion Collection DVD

Henry V

For George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Lester’s screenwriter for The Three and The Four Musketeers, and therefore our patron saint, the Olivier version of Shakespeare’s Henry V was the finest movie ever made. It’s a wonderful film, justly celebrated, and there are plenty of sources available explaining why it’s so admirable. For the purposes of this series, we’ll confine ourselves to just two aspects of this classic. First, the armor: ever since Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) had made a mockery of knights in shining armor, it had become the received wisdom that a medieval warrior in full plate was awkward, encumbered, and a lumbering clod once off his horse. Most mid-century Hollywood historical epics paid deference to this idea, showing warriors in heavy armor clanking around ponderously. But the knights and nobles of Henry V wear their plate armor lightly, as if it was tailored for them—as of course it was—seeming completely comfortable and at home while wrapped head to toe in metal, their movements unencumbered, even elegant. More recent scholarship and reconstructions inform us that was, in fact, the way of it: battle armor, though heavy, was made to move and fight in.

Second, there’s the play’s sprawling set piece in the next-to-last act, the recreation of the Battle of Agincourt. In 1944 the Luftwaffe was causing problems in England and even Wales, so the battle was filmed in Ireland, the rolling fields of County Wicklow standing in for the Pas de Calais. A decisive battle in the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, at Agincourt a much larger army of French knights and men-at-arms accosted King Henry’s badly-fatigued force of footmen and English and Welsh longbowmen. To summarize: the French knights charged the English across muddy plowed fields and were slaughtered by the archers. The men-at-arms then closed in from both sides and the battle became a general mêlée, but the English never lost the upper hand, and the French were trounced.

Olivier’s depiction of the battle’s opening scenes was a landmark for its time, unmatched in its clarity and power. The initial charge of the French heavy cavalry draws on Eisenstein’s charge of the Teutonic Knights in Alexander Nevsky, but goes it one better: a tracking camera follows the French vanguard from the side as the knights advance, going from a walk to a trot to a full gallop that seems unstoppable—until they hit the muddy fields and a wall of English and Welsh arrows. The battle then becomes episodic, reverting to Shakespeare’s structure of jumping back and forth to encounters between various combatants, English and French, whom we’d been introduced to earlier in the play. It all ends in a final clash between King Henry and the Constable of the French Army, with Henry, of course, victorious.

Watch for Robert Newton—Long John Silver himself—hamming it up as Ancient Pistol, an English hedge-knight who’s become the leader of Prince Hal’s old band of rogues since the death of John Falstaff. He is hilarious.

By |2018-01-02T21:04:26-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Henry V
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