Swashbuckler Movies | Lawrence Ellsworth

At Sword’s Point

At Sword’s Point
Rating: ****
Origin: USA,1952
Director: : Lewis Allen
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

at swords point

This sequel to The Three Musketeers was made by RKO a couple of years earlier but not released until 1952, possibly to get it out of the long shadow of the 1948 MGM version. There have been dozens of screen versions of The Three Musketeers, but Hollywood has never quite figured out how to adapt Dumas’s sequel, Twenty Years After, into a successful film. This story does use some of the elements of that novel, in particular France on the verge of civil war after the deaths of Louis XIII and Richelieu, with the aging Queen Anne trying to preserve order until Louis XIV can come of age, while fractious nobles, personified here by the scheming Duke de Lavalle (Robert Douglas) vie to seize power. However, instead of having the novel’s older versions of the four musketeers step in to sort things out, this tale calls on their grown-up children to rise to the occasion. Is this Hollywood ageism at work? Well, it certainly isn’t sexism, as one of the younger generation is Athos’s daughter, Claire (Maureen O’Hara), and she’s as good with a blade of any of the men—with the possible exception of the young d’Artagnan, who is, after all, played by an Olympic fencer (Cornel Wilde).

But let’s not gloss over the point: this is the first serious movie representation of a female swashbuckler who is the equal of the men—and accepted by them as such! There’s still plenty of flirtation toward Claire by the young Aramis and d’Artagnan—I mean, these are musketeers—but it’s not condescending, and she gives as good as she gets. The ones who underestimate Claire are the villains, and they learn to be sorry they did. The best moment in the picture is when Lavalle, who’s strong-armed the queen into letting him marry Princess Henriette, leads her to the altar, lifts her veil, and finds that Claire has taken his bride’s place, and the princess is safely in the hands of the other musketeers. Claire, faced with the wrath of the most powerful man in France, just laughs in his face.

The plot here is nothing to write home about, being the usual series of swordfights, kidnappings, escapes, pursuits, betrayals, traps, and rescues, but the writers are clearly admirers of Dumas, and there are a number of fun call-outs to the novels, e.g., minor characters named Planchet and Rochefort, and at one point Claire, hoodwinking some guards, assumes the name Countess de La Fère—the family name in the novels of her father, Athos. Plus the costumes are good, Wilde does some nicely acrobatic swashbuckling, and the blue tabards of the King’s Musketeers come out of the wardrobe for the grand finale. All fine, but it’s Maureen O’Hara who walks away with the prize for this film.

By Lawrence2014|2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights
Rating: **
Origin: USA,1942
Director: : John Rawlins
Source: Universal Cinema Classics DVD

Arabian Nights

In the 1940s Universal was a modest-sized studio whose business was cranking out low-budget adventure pictures in every genre. After he starred in the 1940 British Thief of Bagdad, Indian teen star Sabu moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Universal. They cast him in some jungle adventures, but also decided to try him in their own Arabian Nights fantasy, titled, er, Arabian Nights. The studio splurged on fancy costumes, big sets, and shot it all in Technicolor, but relied on their usual stable of B- and C-listers to round out the cast.

The movie’s title notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem like anyone involved with this story read The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment beyond the list of characters, cherry-picking the ones that sounded familiar. Haroun-al-Raschid (Jon Hall), Caliph of Bagdad, is betrayed by his Grand Vizier in favor of his evil half-brother, Kamar, who is determined to steal the throne because it’s the only way he can win the love of the ambitious dancing girl Sherazade (Maria Montez). Yeah, that’s how dumb this is. Sherazade is part of a troupe of “humorous” traveling entertainers that includes an acrobat, Ali (Sabu), a doofus named Aladdin whose shtick is always searching for his lost lamp, and another doofus who tells boring sea stories and goes by the name Sinbad (Shemp Howard!, wearing brownface). Haroun, wounded in the vizier’s coup but saved by Ali and disguised (they shave him), falls in with this troupe; Haroun and Sherazade make eyes at each other, guards with scimitars appear, and gags and pursuits ensue.

So evil Kamar openly wants the throne and the love of Sherazade; the evil vizier secretly wants the throne and the love of Sherazade; disguised caliph Haroun wants the throne and … well, you get it. Despite the references to magic lamps, it’s a conventional dynastic struggle with no fantasy elements to it, unless you count the male fantasy in which Ali hides among the caliph’s scantily-clad harem girls while two of them distract the eunuch guards with a hair-pulling cat-fight. (Yup.) We get ornery camels, and shiny turbans, and scenic sand dunes, but the story doesn’t make a lick of sense, the acting is uniformly terrible, and all the scimitar-clashing fights are at the level of community-theater stage combat. So naturally it was a big hit, and henceforth Hollywood had a new ongoing adventure genre, the Arabian Fantasy. Allah preserve us.

By Lawrence2014|2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Rating: ***
Origin: USA,1944
Director: : Arthur Lubin
Source: Universal DVD

Ali Baba

After the success of the dumb Arabian Nights, Universal decided to give the genre another go with substantially the same cast—and we’re glad they did, because the second movie is 100% less dumb than the first. It starts out with an actual historical event, the 1258 siege and sacking of Bagdad by the Mongols of Hulagu Khan, and scenes of the massacre of the Bagdadis immediately set this film’s more serious tone. The Caliph is betrayed by his Grand Vizier and killed in a Mongol ambush (note to self: if Sultan or Caliph, do not have Grand Vizier), but the Caliph’s only son, Ali, escapes. Though historically the boy was captured by the Khan, here he gets away into the desert, where he stumbles upon the secret hideout of a band of forty thieves. And yes, the magic words “Open, sesame,” do open the lair’s stone doors, the only fantasy element in this film. To the bandits, Ali reveals his identity as the Caliph’s son, and their leader, Old Baba, adopts him as his own, hiding him under the new name Ali Baba. Old Baba appoints his aide, Abdullah—squeaky-voiced Andy Devine, here in brownface, best known for playing comic sidekicks in Westerns—to be Ali’s guardian and also, inevitably, his comic sidekick.

Ten years pass, and Ali, now grown (and henceforth played by Jon Hall), has emerged as the leader of the gang, which he’s re-forged into a band of freedom fighters conducting a guerilla war against the occupying Mongols. The Forty Thieves now wear red and blue uniform robes, and they even have a theme song they sing while galloping across the desert! “We riiiiide … plundering sons, thundering sons, forty and one for all, and all for one.” Hmm, that part sounds familiar. Wait, so does the next part: “Robbing the rich, feeding the poor….” Okay, got it: the Forty Thieves are the Merrie Men. Robin, I mean Ali, is scouting a Mongol camp when he meets Lady Amara (Maria Montez) swimming fetchingly in the water of the oasis. The daughter of the treacherous vizier, she’s on her way to Bagdad to be married to Hulagu Khan—but as a little girl, she had been the boy Ali’s childhood sweetheart, so this marriage must be stopped! Swashbuckling ensues, with raids, abductions, and captures, in all of which Amara is aided by her loyal knife-throwing servant, young Jamiel (Turhan Bey—the rôle had been written for Sabu, but having become a naturalized citizen, the teen star had joined the Army Air Force to serve as a tail gunner in B-24s). Ali decides it’s time for full-scale revolt against the Mongols, but gets captured himself, and to save him the thieves have to get smuggled into the palace inside forty man-sized oil jars—the only other nod, besides the cave doors, to the original Ali Baba story in The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. In the end the uprising rises up in the nick of time, and—spoiler!—Lady Amara doesn’t have to marry Hulagu Khan. It’s not bad.

By Lawrence2014|2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

Alexander Nevsky

Alexander Nevsky
Rating: ****
Origin: Russia,1938
Director: : Sergei Eisenstein
Source: Criterion Collection DVD

Criterion Collection DVD

Alexander Nevsky is a towering achievement, an enduring classic of world cinema, except for the parts where it’s goofy and awful. Director Sergei Eisenstein, who’d made his name in the silent era with Battleship Potemkin (1925), had been trying ever since the advent of sound in film to get another movie made, but under the strictures of Stalin’s Russia it was nigh impossible. Finally, by selecting as subject a historical tale of Russian resistance to German aggression (Hitler was saber-rattling at Stalin), and by collaborating on the script with a Communist Party bigwig, Eisenstein was able to bring Nevsky to the screen.

It’s set in the 13^th century, when the lands of the Kievan Rus, already plundered by the Mongols from the east, are beset by a new threat from the Teutonic Knights to the west. To counter the German assault, the boyars of Novgorod turn to the war hero who’d staved off the Swedes from the north, Prince Alexander Nevsky (Nikolai Cherkasov). From a story standpoint, this isn’t a complicated film: there’s the main, heroic plot, in which Alexander rallies the Russians to resist the heinous Germans, plus a goofy romantic subplot in which two cartoonish would-be heroes vie for the affections of a glorious Russian war maiden. But ignore all that and just look at this movie, because the matchless visuals are what we’re here for.

After a run-in with some Mongols from the Golden Horde—who look perfect—Alexander is off to Novgorod to start building a coalition to fight the Germans. The reconstruction of Novgorod is painstaking and beautiful: this is Old Russia, built of wood and earth and complete in every lovely detail. And the Germans are coming to destroy it.

Cut to the city of Pskov, newly conquered, and the Teutonic Knights, its conquerors. Here history has been augmented by art to depict a truly evil enemy. The knights are armored automatons, faceless and inhuman in their full helms, dealing death with cold, fanatical zeal. Even their foot soldiers’ heads are enveloped in coal-scuttle helms that deliberately evoke the helmets of the German Wehrmacht. Imperial Stormtroopers? Here’s where they come from, Star Wars fans. Only the knights’ robed and hooded priests have faces—but their visages are the cadaverous faces of vultures, Emperor Palpatine in the medieval flesh.

These Germans are bad. How bad are these Germans? They burn babies, and throw live children right into bonfires. That’s how bad.

On to the arousing-the-Russian-people-to-fight montage, and high time to mention the stirring orchestral and choral soundtrack by Sergei Prokofiev. Eisenstein worked closely with Prokofiev to fully integrate the music with the moving images. The director had distinct ideas about how to do this, because he’d been studying the recent revolutionary synchronization of music and film by its undisputed master: Walt Disney.

The last half of the movie is pretty much all medieval war and its aftermath, as Alexander maneuvers the Teutonic Knights into a final confrontation on the ice of frozen Lake Chudskoye. The climactic battle is justly famous for its setup and onset. The advance and charge of the Teutonic Knights established the look and feel for medieval warfare on film for everything to follow, from Laurence Olivier’s Henry V all the way to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It must be said, this is one long-ass battle, but it’s organized into several clear and distinct phases, so the viewer never loses track of what’s going on. The goofy romantic rivals get too much screen time, and Prokofiev’s pursuit theme is shrill, frenetic, and overwrought, but the climax on the icy lake, as the surface cracks and disintegrates under the heavily-armored Germans, pays for all.

Victory, however, leads to deep melancholy and extended brooding over the carnage, because Russians. “I kiss your sightless eyes and caress your cold forehead,” the chorus sings. But at least the romantic subplot ends happily. (Duh.) There’s even a parade! Hats are waved, babies are kissed, and all is well again in Mother Russia.

By Lawrence2014|2018-01-02T21:06:18-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off

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