2017 | Lawrence Ellsworth

Black Pirate

Black Pirate
Rating: *****
Origin: USA, 1926
Director: Albert Parker
Source: Kino Video DVD

The Black Pirate was a risky experiment with a new technology that went by the name of “Technicolor”—a risk that, in the main, paid off. It was also the first big-budget Caribbean pirate movie, and Douglas Fairbanks went all-in on an original story that drew heavily on Howard Pyle’s tales, drawings, and paintings, and on Stevenson’s Treasure Island—the best possible sources, really.

The film opens with a pirate crew plundering a captured merchantman, and immediately establishes that these sea rovers are bad, bad people, as atrocities are committed in the name of plunder and sheer bloody cruelty. The pillaged ship is sunk, its powder magazine exploded, after which Fairbanks, the sole survivor, makes it ashore to a desert island, where he vows to live for revenge.

This is the film that established the visual look of all Hollywood pirate films to follow—right up to the current day, really. Waistcoats and sashes, peglegs and parrots, eye-patches and cutlasses, tattoos, piercings, and questionable facial hair—it’s all here. And then there are the familiar tropes: treasure buried in hidden caves, dividing the spoils on the quarterdeck, drunken roistering, walking the plank—look no further for their cinematic origins.

Posing as a cutthroat, Fairbanks boldly makes a bid to join the band of buccaneers, as they are conveniently burying their treasure on the island where he was marooned. He beats their best fighter in a fencing match—some nice sword-fighting, with some fine rapier-and-dagger work—and joins the crew. Challenged by a Basil Rathbone-cognate to show he understands that there’s more to piracy than swordplay, Fairbanks proves he has brains as well as brawn by taking a merchant ship by stratagem.

The stunts in this film are amazing, as Fairbanks swings through the rigging like Spider-Man. This is the movie where the riding-your-dagger-as-it-slices-its-way-down-the-sail gag was invented—it’s such a great stunt, he does it three times.

Clad all in black silks and leather, Fairbanks takes the name “the Black Pirate,” and sets out to become the pirates’ leader—and then immediately betray them. There’s a captive princess to rescue into the bargain, with whom he’s fallen in love at first sight. But his plans are foiled by a clever rival, and there follows a series of sudden reversals, clever ruses, daring escapes, and unexpected twists. Most unexpected of all, for Your Editor at least, is when Fairbanks, having escaped from the pirates, returns to rescue the princess in command of a long, slim galley rowed by three dozen body-builders clad mainly in shiny leather straps. And then, frankly, things just get weird. But the weird ending notwithstanding, this is a fabulous picture, grand and exciting, and not to be missed.

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:25:48-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Black Knight

Black Knight
Rating: *
Origin: UK / USA, 1954
Director: Tay Garnett
Source: Amazon streaming video

Where to start with this one? The Black Knight is a very silly movie. Its hugely-popular star, Alan Ladd, has in only three years since Shane become a self-caricature, playing the same part in every picture, a bluff, laconic good-guy whose solution to every problem is a sock on the jaw. For tax purposes he stayed out of the U.S. for nineteen months in 1952-54, making four films overseas, including this medieval Arthurian travesty. A bluff, laconic smith known only as John (Ladd) forges arms and armor in the Earl of Yeonil’s smithy. John and the earl’s daughter Linnet (Patricia Medina) are in love, but John, a commoner, knows it’s hopeless. A bluff, laconic visiting knight from nearby Camelot tells John not to despair, and reveals that he, too, was once a commoner. “You made your own sword,” he tells John, “now let your sword make you.” This is the only good line in the picture.

Cue the Viking raid! Obviously phony Norsemen in crazy horned helms burst into the castle, pillaging and killing. One of them strikes down the earl, then he and his leader set fire to the place and ride away. John pursues, and sees the raiders doff their Viking gear, revealing themselves to be secret Saracens! They ride to Camelot, and John chases them right into King Arthur’s throne room, where he socks them on the jaw. Arthur doesn’t like this because the Saracen is Sir Palamides (Peter Cushing!), one of his Knights of the Round Table. (No round table appears in this film.) Bound by immutable law, Arthur sentences John to death, but is then reminded that it’s a holiday, so by immutable law Arthur must grant John a boon. John asks for time to prove Palamides is a traitor, and Arthur grants him three months.

John does what anyone would do in this situation: he adopts a secret identity! He becomes the Black Knight, wearing a suit of armor he made himself, and this ploy enables him to … well, it’s not really clear how it helps, but stuff happens, the bad guys do more bad things, and John fights a lot, except when he’s galloping off to another fight. There are at least twenty-five minutes of fighting in this eighty-five minute movie, and not a second of it bears any resemblance to actual medieval combat. The knights’ armor is all hilariously awkward and wrong, as if the costumers had never seen a real suit of armor and just copied from bad comic books—couldn’t someone from Pinewood have popped down to the British Museum for an hour? The knights’ helms all have tall lurid totems on top and weird protruding vizors, but in the Black Knight’s case this has the advantage of covering his face, which means all that fighting can be done by Ladd’s stunt double. Now and then the Black Knight pauses in mid-combat, steps back, and they cut to Ladd in rear-screen projection, flipping up his vizor for a moment so you can see it’s really him. Smile, Alan!

Meanwhile, there’s treachery in Camelot: Palamides is in league with Arthur’s putative ally, King Mark of Cornwell (Patrick Troughton—yes, the Second Doctor), but Mark is a crypto-pagan who secretly wants to wipe out Arthur and his new Christians because pagans are just like that. The pagans capture Lady Linnet and plan to sacrifice her at Stonehenge, which is complete and unruined, albeit cardboard, but John spoils their fun, and then Arthur orders his knights to throw lassos around the great stones and pull them down. And That’s How Stonehenge Got Ruined. But the naughty pagans and Saracens just won’t give up, even after their Viking imposture is exposed, so John has to sneak into Mark’s castle to steal their secret plans to attack Camelot. He has to do this twice because the first time he leaves without taking the plans, I am not even making this up. Stay to the end to see the newly-dubbed Sir John marry Lady Linnet in a dress made of iridescent cellophane feathers. I think Thomas Malory would dig it.

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:24:56-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Black Arrow

Black Arrow
Rating: ****
Origin: USA,1948
Director: Gordon Douglas
Source: Columbia Pictures DVD

Say, this is good. Based, somewhat loosely, on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1888 novel, it compresses and abridges but gets the essence right. This is another of producer Edward Small’s swashbucklers starring Louis Hayward, a story of the War of the Roses in which Hayward plays one of the victorious Yorkists, Sir Richard Shelton, returning home after the defeat of the Lancastrians. He pauses to drink at a stream, and a black arrow thuds into a tree next to him—an arrow wrapped with a note in rhyme from a mysterious “John Amend-All,” warning him of treachery ahead. And in fact, Shelton arrives at his home estate to find his father has been murdered, a crime blamed on a neighboring Lancastrian noble, now executed—but survived by a spirited daughter, Joanna Sedley (Janet Blair). More black arrows arrive with rhymed warnings and clues, and gradually Richard realizes that there was something fishy about his father’s murder. Interestingly, we know whodunit from the start: Richard’s grasping Uncle Daniel (George Macready), whom we see meeting with his three accomplices to pull the wool over Richard’s eyes. Following the clues of the black arrows leads Richard to a gang of outlaws in nearby Tunstall Forest, a band already deliberately evocative of Robin Hood’s in Stevenson’s novel, the similarities emphasized even more here. The rest of the story is about how Richard, with the help of Joanna and “John Amend-All,” learns the truth—and what he does about it.

If the sets look familiar, it’s because we’ve seen them before in Bandit of Sherwood Forest and Prince of Thieves, and will see more of them in The Swordsman and others to come. Hayward’s Sir Richard is one of his best performances, and Macready does good work as the villainous uncle, but Janet Blair as the heroine deserves special notice. Blair, a big-band vocalist who had a second career acting in the movies, is sharp and spicy, and her byplay with Hayward is delightful. Kudos also to Lowell Gilmore, suave and malicious, as the slightly-hunchbacked Duke of Gloucester—yes, the eventual Richard III. And though the film’s budget is modest, veteran director George Douglas keeps the action spare and tight. Douglas made several swashbucklers, and we’re always glad to see his name in the credits; you may know him best as the director of the sci-fi classic Them! (1954).

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:24:36-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Beloved Rogue

Beloved Rogue
Rating: ***
Origin: USA,1927
Director: Alan Crosland
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

The beloved Rogue

The Beloved Rogue is a strange one: it’s ostensibly based on events from the life of the first great poet of the French language, François Villon (1431-1463) –a man whose life we know next to nothing about, and what little we do know doesn’t exactly support this movie’s story. About the only thing they got right is that the great poet was also a petty criminal, a thief and ruffian who frequently ran afoul of the law. But this film is no bio-pic, it’s more a romantic fable of the Middle Ages, so maybe the facts don’t matter.

We know we’re in fable territory from the very first scenes set in a medieval Paris deep in the grip of winter, the city’s crazy gambrel roofs covered in snow and dripping with icicles. (The exaggerated sets are by William Cameron Menzies, who also did The Thief of Bagdad.) Villon, who enters the film in mid-robbery, stealing a jug of frozen wine, is played by John Barrymore, who gives his daring rogue a devil-may-care insouciance lacking in Douglas Fairbanks’ earnest heroes. Barrymore switches back and forth from heartthrob to buffoon without hesitation, always three sheets to the wind, and as the King of Revels on All-Fools’-Day, he clowns like he just don’t care. Already famous for his poetry, darling of both the beggars and the nobility, Villon gets caught up in a political struggle between King Louis XI and the Duke of Burgundy, who wants the throne. The poet writes scathing satirical doggerel skewering both king and duke, romances the king’s adorable ward, dodges death and exile, and engages in assorted drunken shenanigans involving a catapult, a performing bear, a capering dwarf, Burgundian crossbowmen, and an army of beggars from the Court of Miracles. Barrymore’s Villon is a blond Byron who does all his fighting with his words and his wits, winning the day through sheer cleverness.

But the impish Villon doesn’t own this picture, he has to share it with King Louis XI, the master conniver of his day, played here by the great German actor Conrad Veidt (in his first Hollywood role) as a saturnine vulture, alternating between cruel gloating and cowardly cringing. It’s a bravura performance that even overshadows Barrymore’s in the scenes they share. There’s also some fairly daring direction for the day from Alan Crosland, who shoots at unusual angles, splits an image tenfold through a mullioned window, and employs long takes dwelling on Barrymore’s features as he has an inspiring idea or comes to a horrified realization, his every thought written clearly on his face. Good stuff.

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:23:31-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

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Yearly Archives: 2017

Black Pirate

Black Knight

Black Arrow

Beloved Rogue