Lawrence2014 | Lawrence Ellsworth

About Lawrence2014

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Lawrence2014 has created 148 blog entries.

Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men

The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men
Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Ken Annakin
Source: Disney DVD

After the success of Disney’s Treasure Island (1950), Walt decided to continue the studio’s live-action adventures with Robin Hood, another well-known (and public domain) property. Since 1938 every Robin Hood movie had stood in the shadow of the towering Errol Flynn film, but this was to be a restart, a resetting of the legend for the safe and conformist ‘50s. In this telling Robin (Richard Todd) is infantilized: when we meet him, he’s a lad playing juvenile archery games with Maid Marian (Joan Rice) while his father, the chief forester for the Earl of Huntington, meets with the other grown-up, bearded, manly men to prepare for what manly men do, which is go to war. The earl—Marian’s father—is eager to follow his own father-figure, King Richard, off to fight in the Crusades. Big Daddy Richard leaves behind Prince John, in this version hardly older than a lad himself, enjoining him to mind the kingdom in his absence, and the earl does the same for his domains with his forester, Fitzooth.

The kids had been warned to play nice while the daddies are gone, but John would rather be a bully, so there. Since Richard took the manly, bearded old Sheriff of Nottingham with him on Crusade, John appoints his crony Guy of Gisbourne to be the new sheriff (a convenient combining of characters), and orders him to build a force of the finest archers in the land. The sheriff hires a few ruthless goons who begin plundering the peasants to collect John’s new extortionate taxes, but he needs more, so he organizes an archery tournament to overawe the serfs and attract more bowmen. Now, in the Robin Hood legend, Robin is usually the finest archer in all England, but here it’s his own father who splits Robin’s arrow and wins the tournament. Daddy knows best! However, loyal to Big Daddy Richard, Fitzooth refuses to join John’s tax collectors, so the sheriff has him murdered, Robin kills the assassin, and then, proscribed, has to go off into the woods and play outlaw with the other bullied boys.

The wild and dangerous edge that Flynn brought to Robin Hood is gone here: Todd is a Boy Scout with a junior executive haircut and a smile from a toothpaste commercial, and Basil Rathbone would eat him for lunch and carry off Maid Marian for dessert. Such carping criticisms aside, on its own terms this movie is a pretty good retelling of the Robin Hood story, successfully establishing the tone and template that would rule the remakes for a decade or so, especially the popular Adventures of Robin Hood TV show that would run from 1955 through 1959. Shooting the film in the forests of old England rather than the California woods gives the film an authentic feel, and as he showed with Treasure Island, director Ken Annakin is equally adept with character development and action scenes. The Merrie Men are all charming and well-cast, and the clever use of the minstrel Alan-a-Dale to provide segues in song from one scene to another works well. The climactic fight between Robin and the sheriff is genuinely suspenseful, and if the violence isn’t as gritty as in Treasure Island, it’s less bland and bloodless than it will be later in the ‘50s. Marian even gets to join with the Merrie Men for a while and play in their secret clubhouse—so long as she dresses up like one of the lads and doesn’t do any icky girl stuff. Ew!

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:42:04-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Spanish Main

The Spanish Main
Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1945
Director: Frank Borzage
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

The Spanish Main

This is a fine Technicolor pirate epic, grand and satisfying, the story carried by the energy of its three marquee stars and a surprise stand-out fourth. Paul Henreid, best known as Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, is the heroic lead, a Dutch ship captain who is caught and enslaved when a storm drives his peaceful ship aground in Spanish colonial waters. He escapes and becomes a feared pirate captain known as the Barracuda, preying exclusively on Spanish shipping. You might not think the stiff and rather serious Henreid could buckle a swash like Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power, but you’d be wrong: his Captain Barracuda displays an edge of mocking arrogance that enables him to command buccaneers and defy Spaniards, he looks good in pirate garb, and he knows what to do when you put a sword in his hand.

The Barracuda captures a Spanish ship bearing our second star, the radiant Maureen O’Hara as the Condesa Francisca, on her way to marry the Viceroy of New Granada—who is the particular target of the Barracuda’s campaign of revenge. When he meets Francisca, sparks fly, and he decides to marry her just to spite the viceroy—or is there another motive? The condesa initially refuses, but then she finds a reason of her own to agree, sort of. The two maneuver around each other into marriage like a pair of tall ships tacking in to a boarding action. Here, as with her rôle in The Black Swan, O’Hara has to find a means to give herself away without giving herself up. She does, and O’Hara has the chops to make you believe it.

The viceroy, Don Juan, isn’t happy about any of this, but when Don Juan is unhappy, we’re delighted, because he’s played by Walter Slezak, and we like him when he’s angry! Slezak is basically reprising his governor’s rôle from The Princess and the Pirate, but the viceroy is much smarter, more menacing, and equipped with a wicked sense of humor. He’s quick-witted, mean, and oozes contempt for his inferiors, i.e., everyone. It takes everything the Barracuda and Francisca have to defeat him, and even so it’s a near-run thing.

But before our two romantic leads run afoul of the viceroy’s final trap, they put in to Tortuga for some roistering, revelry, and a spot of getting-betrayed-by-your-allies-because-what-do-you-expect-from-pirates? One of these allies is Binnie Barnes playing the historical female pirate Anne Bonny, and The Spanish Main is worth watching for her alone. This is, I believe, the first appearance of Anne Bonny on screen, and in Barnes’s portrayal she’s tough, jealous, but fiercely independent, and takes no guff from anyone. In this she resembled Barnes herself, who had a long career in the movies from the 1920s to the ‘70s, but always refused to play submissive rôles: anything, she said, “as long as I don’t have to be a sweet woman.” Amen to that.

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:41:42-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Son of Monte Cristo

The Son of Monte Cristo
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1940
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Source: American Home Treasures DVD

Independent producer Edward Small’s biggest hit was The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) with star Robert Donat. Small planned to follow up with a sequel, but Donat bailed and went back to England, so the producer set the project aside until he found a charming new star in Louis Hayward. Sadly, this mediocre sequel doesn’t live up to its memorable predecessor, never really rising above Pretty Good. Much of the problem lies with screenwriter George Bruce’s story, a predictable cape-and-sword potboiler that’s more Anthony Hope (i.e., Zenda) than Alexandre Dumas, with a proto-fascist villain anachronistically thrown in for good measure.

At least the proto-fascist, General Gurko Lanen, is played by the lethally arrogant George Sanders, the only man in Hollywood who could out-sneer Basil Rathbone. The tale is set in 1865 in the fictional Balkan country of Lichtenburg, whose young ruler (Joan Bennett) is Grand Duchess Zona, a name that cannot be improved upon. Lanen and his jackbooted thugs threaten to usurp Zona’s power, so she attempts to escape to Paris to call for French intervention. Though her attempt is foiled, it’s stopped in a border incident that draws in the dashing Count of Monte Cristo—or his son, anyway, who now bears the title. Zona is taken back to Lichtenburg, and Monte Cristo, smitten, follows her.

The ensuing intrigues in Lichtenburg, though predictable, are entertaining enough, but the only thing Monte Cristo-ish about them is that the count adopts several guises and impersonations in his campaign to rescue Zona and her grand duchy from Gurko Lanen. The film plays genre-convention bingo by checking off secret passages, a masked outlaw, a grim castle dungeon, a fop with a quizzing glass, a secret treaty, a slimy sewer, a treacherous servant, forged documents, an interrupted wedding, and plenty of lively swordplay—nothing new here, but at least it’s enthusiastic. Hayward is likeable and energetic, Bennett is appealing and determined, and Sanders steals his every scene with sheer supercilious effrontery. Director Rowland V. Lee, who helmed the original, keeps the sequel moving along, and it’s a good time, mostly. Watch for Clayton Moore—yes, the Lone Ranger—as an earnest young guard captain loyal to Zona who allies with Monte Cristo.

By Lawrence2014|2018-02-11T17:41:21-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Son of Ali Baba

Son of Ali Baba
Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Kurt Neumann
Source: Universal Vault DVD

Son of Ali Baba

Universal decided to do another Arabian Nights-style adventure starring Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie, but this time around they got a dud. Thanks to his ex-thief father Ali’s vast wealth, Kashma Baba (Curtis) is enrolled with the sons of the nobility as a cadet in Bagdad’s Military Academy—which, except for the dark Curtis, is entirely filled with WASP-looking frat boys straight from the country club. (As usual, only merchants, thieves, and the caliph’s goons look like actual Persians or Arabs.) Kashma throws himself a rowdy birthday party in his opulent Bagdad house in which the caliph’s boorish son gets thrown into Kashma’s indoor pool. Uh oh! Vengeance is sworn, and the next morning Kashma is embroiled in a plot to ruin him and his father by foisting an escaped slave girl, Kiki (Laurie), upon him, only she’s really a princess who’s been promised to the shah unless she can find Ali Baba’s treasure for the caliph to save her mother but it’s impossible to care because this thing is a mess, okay?

I always hate to blame the writers, they’ve got it hard enough, but in this case I feel obliged to point the finger of shame at Gerald Drayson Adams, who concocted this goofy story and wrote all the terrible, terrible dialogue. There’s a definite high style to the classic Arabian Nights stories, and adapting that poetic diction to a movie script can be done, and well, but based on this clunker Adams had no idea how to do it. These poor actors are only human, and no one can say a line like, “I sense an evil hand has wrought this chain of circumstances!” without looking at least a little embarrassed. Poor Tony Curtis has it the worst, having to utter junk like, “Perished I would have, had not the princess dragged me from the flames,” all with a pronounced Noo Yawk accent. Yeesh. (“This is the palace of my fadda, and yonda is the Valley of the Sun” is actually from this film rather than the later Black Shield of Falworth.)

The only real point of interest in this otherwise dull and derivative exercise is the character of Tala (Susan Cabot), a bow-wielding huntress and friend of Kashma’s youth. At first it seems her only purpose is to make Princess Piper jealous of her connection to Kashma, but then she saves the day several times in succession with her deadly talents at archery. Tala is genuinely intriguing and capable, and how she wandered into this fiasco is anybody’s guess. The rôle should probably have been combined with the princess’s so Laurie would have something to do other than look ornamental, because as it stands, her considerable talents are wasted. Skip this one and watch The Prince who was a Thief a second time instead.

By Lawrence2014|2018-01-02T21:02:11-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Previous 131415 Next