1938 adventure, dir. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, Errol Flynn,
Olivia de Havilland; IMDb /
allmovie. Prince John oppresses
the Saxons; a Saxon lord fights back.
This was a film that had to tread carefully: the 1922 silent
Robin Hood had used many of the traditional story elements and
United Artists was known to be somewhat lawsuit-happy, so some new
ones were dug up for this production (such as the fight with Little
John on the bridge, and the piggy-back incident with Friar Tuck).
Perhaps because of that, there's no setup: at the start of the film
Richard is already imprisoned and Robin is already an outlaw fighting
on the side of Right, with backstory to be filled in later, though he
gathers more of the traditional band in the first act.
This is a fast-moving film: its 97 minutes are packed with action with
only occasional pauses for dramatic speeches. Without the need to
repeat a complicated explanation several times for the hard of
thinking, all the dialogue serves to move the plot forward. This was
Warners' first big-budget film in three-strip Technicolor, and not
only is everything thoroughly saturated, they don't want to waste
expensive footage on boring static things.
But it's the cast that's glorious here. Errol Flynn is perhaps more
important for his physicality than for his acting, and Olivia de
Havilland's Marian is thoroughly underwritten (though she is the only
character who undergoes any sort of transformation; and her gowns are
lovely, mostly silver lamé that perversely grabs the attention by
being the one thing in the scene that's not saturated colour);
but we also have Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy, Claude Rains putting on a
splendidly casual evil as Prince John, and Melville Cooper as a
cowardly braggart Sheriff of Nottingham. Any one of those performances
could anchor a film, and we get all of them.
Korngold's score probably saved his life (without that job, he would
still have been in Vienna for the Anschluss), and does a good job of
setting a mood but keeping to the background – except when it's forced
to be diegetic, as we suddenly cut to some trumpeters miming in time
to the music. That's a distracting stylistic choice, but to my mind
the only mis-step by Curtiz (who was brought in to move things along
when William Keighley was being too slow for the studio's
preferences).
This film stands up splendidly even now. More recent productions tend
to be dark and serious, but Flynn's Robin laughs even as he knows his
life is on the line. One could do much worse.
Trailer here.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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