Cuplog

First, let it be stated that Robin Hood, the film directed by Ridley Scott, is less a swashbuckling adventure in the traditional sense than an attempt to reimagine the legendary hero’s origin in an historical context that discards much of the romantic mythology surrounding the reign of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Inasmuch as the earliest legends of Robin Hood place his activities during the reign of an unspecified King Edward, the retelling of the story with an accurate portrayal of King Richard’s reign is hardly less faithful than a purely fanciful portrayal of the same. Naturally, much of the conflict arises from King John’s depredations, but unlike the popular reinterpretations of the Robin Hood myth that began in the 16th century, the return of Good King Richard, crusading in the Holy Land, is not awaited like the Second Coming of Christ to deliver England from evil. Unlike the myth as it has evolved in later centuries, Robin Hood is not a dispossessed nobleman, but a yeoman, a commoner, just as he was in the earliest tales. Unlike the character as it has been portrayed in film since the beginning (with the exception of Robin and Marian), Robin Hood in this film is a man, albeit a remarkable one, whom one could plausibly believe really lived.

Russell Crowe, as Robin Hood, is eminently qualified to imbue the character with a degree of realism almost without precedent. His is a Robin Hood with a lifetime’s worth of experiences even before he has embarked on the path that will bring him immortality in folklore. Cate Blanchett, as Marian, has perhaps the more daunting challenge of giving life to a character who is not only entirely fictional, but was not even originally part of the Robin Hood legend. The script gives Marian a better grounding than she has ever enjoyed in any other telling, and Blanchett adds believability and strength to the character’s noted beauty. Together, Crowe and Blanchett create a Robin and Marian who are individuals with their own complexity, whose relationship evolves humanly rather than arbitrarily. This is no small achievement for anyone tackling a story with such a long history and an audience with such deeply-ingrained expectations.

Although the trappings of this film suggest the pursuit of historical accuracy, there is also an allegiance to the spirit of the tales of Robin Hood, from the inclusion of such fictional characters as Marian and Alan-a-Dale, to the sentiments of true justice, compassion, and opposition to hypocrisy and tyranny. By choosing to set the film during the latter part of King John’s regency and the early part of his reign, it was possible to link Robin Hood directly to historic events that epitomize a rejection of the absolute rule of monarchs and the rise of a unique English identity beyond Saxon and Norman divisions.

All in all, Scott’s Robin Hood is the greatest film adaptation of the legend since Robin and Marian, and certainly the greatest film depicting Robin Hood at either the beginning or height of his career as the bandit who “steals from the rich to give to the poor.”

• Writing: Great
• Directing: Great
• Acting: Superb
• Cinematography: Great
• Stunts: Good
• Swordplay: Good
• Panache: Great

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Good

It is the dawn of the golden age of piracy, when Spain was claiming dominion over the oceans and plundering the wealth of the New World — and England was plundering Spanish treasure ships. The Sea Hawk served a dual purpose in 1940 as both a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure starring the most popular swashbuckler of his time, Errol Flynn (as privateer Geoffrey Thorpe), and as a thoughtful allegory of the most pressing concern of the time, England’s resistance to Germany’s ambitions of global domination. As a testament to how seriously it was taken, thespian Flora Robson was enlisted to play the part of Queen Elizabeth and reportedly inspired Flynn to unprecedented heights of professional behavior out of his admiration for her (Robson).

The Sea Hawk was a considerable improvement over its nautical forebearer, Captain Blood. The sea battles were more convincing (and made at far greater expense), the plot was more cohesive, the performances had more solidity, and the fight choreography was much more carefully planned. The climactic duel between Errol Flynn’s Captain Thorpe and Henry Daniell’s Lord Wolfingham (although a stunt double stood in for Daniell) remains one of the great examples of swordplay in the genre.

It has been claimed that The Sea Hawk was the logical next step in the path that began with Captain Blood and was followed by The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in terms of what the public wanted and what the studio had readily available in sets and costumes, but it is more than that. There is far greater unity in the quality of the script, acting, and directing than in its predecessors. Whether it is the result of a convergence of talent tempered by experience, or the greater devotion that was dedicated to the project by virtue of its message, The Sea Hawk is one of the best adventure films of its kind.

• Writing: Good
• Directing: Great
• Acting: Great
• Cinematography: Great
• Stunts: Good
• Swordplay: Superb
• Panache: Great

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Great

The first of the great swashbuckling films of the sound era, Captain Blood (1935) provided the first major roles for its two stars, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. It contained all the right ingredients in mostly the right proportions: gallantry, piracy, duels, sea battles, politics, and romance. Nothing about the film is perfect: the accents are of mixed authenticity, the quality of the acting is variable, and the fight choreography wavers between natural and wooden, but the film’s totality outshines its components. Greater swashbuckling films would follow, but Captain Blood carved a wider path for them.

• Writing: Good
• Directing: Good
• Acting: Fair/Good
• Cinematography: Good
• Stunts: Good
• Swordplay: Good
• Panache: Good

Overall Rating: Good
Swashbuckling Rank: Good

What would happen if you combined a film adaptation of the greatest swashbuckling epic of all time, Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, with a Chinese kung fu flick? Apparently the makers of The Musketeer (2001) asked such a question, and the answer is nothing good.

The stunts, which are likely the reason (or excuse) for the film being made at all, are intended to awe and amuse the audience, but merely bore with their ridiculousness. There are two basic schools of martial arts films. One emphasizes the true physical mastery of the martial artist (such as Bruce Lee or Tony Jaa); the other emphasizes the martial artist as a fantasy hero, with wires to enable the characters to perform superhuman feats and various techniques to convey superhuman speed and agility. The greatest swashbuckling movies, for the most part, can count themselves as kin to the first type of martial arts movie, going all the way back to the derring-do of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., with stunts that were all the more shocking for their audacity because they were real. In much the same way that one is astounded by the skill and courage of trapeze artists, the best of the classic swashbuckling films had actors who did all their own fencing, climbing, leaping, diving, chandelier-swinging, and precipice-balancing. Replace all that with wires, stunt doubles, and very careful editing, and you rip the soul out of swashbuckling. And you get The Musketeer.

The inappropriate stylings of stunt choreographer Xin Xin Xiong aside, The Musketeer manages to reduce its greatest strength, its source material, to a bland and predictable tale of revenge, halfheartedly and wearily performed by its better actors (Catherine Deneuve) and woodenly performed by its lesser actors (the rest of the cast). Characters who had a richness of complexity are impoverished by the writers to a state of two-dimensionality that could have been just as easily fulfilled by cardboard standees. Whether assessed as an adaptation or revision of The Three Musketeers, The Musketeer is a uniform failure.

• Writing: Terrible
• Directing: Mediocre
• Acting: Poor
• Cinematography: Fair
• Stunts: Poor
• Swordplay: Mediocre
• Panache: Terrible

Overall Rating: Poor
Swashbuckling Rank: Poor

If any film could be declared the ultimate swashbuckling film, Scaramouche (1952) would easily qualify as a contender for the title. It is said to have both the longest duelling scene and the greatest number of duels of any movie. Whether this is true or not, the duels are a marvel of fight choreography. Both Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer performed all of their own duels and stunts, which is all the more remarkable when it is discovered that their duel on the railing of a theatre balcony was executed without a net. The action is spectacular, but the drama and the comedy (essential to a film named after the clown of the Commedia dell’arte) give the film its impeccable balance. Scaramouche is truly one of the great masterpieces of the genre.

• Writing: Great
• Directing: Superb
• Acting: Good
• Cinematography: Great
• Stunts: Superb
• Swordplay: Superb
• Panache: Superb

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Superb

One of the most entertaining courtships in the history of swashbuckling films is that of Tyrone Power as buccaneer Jamie Waring and Maureen O’Hara as Lady Margaret Denby in 1942′s The Black Swan. Although opposites attract, and socially they could scarcely be in greater opposition, they are far more similar in temperament, which leads to an amusing tug of war amongst the backdrop of warring pirates and privateers in the Caribbean during the reign of William III in England and Captain Henry Morgan in Jamaica. The fencing is excellent, as can be expected with Tyrone Power in the lead, although it suffers in at least one scene from the film having been unnecessarily sped up, which is certainly dismaying for those who appreciate Power’s swordsmanship. Beautifully filmed and scored, The Black Swan ranks as one of the genre’s enduring classics.

• Writing: Good
• Directing: Good
• Acting: Great
• Cinematography: Great
• Stunts: Great
• Swordplay: Great
• Panache: Great

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Great

Captain Kidd from 1945 is a lopsided classic of the pirate genre, with the bulk of its favor being the weight of Charles Laughton’s highly entertaining performance as Captain William Kidd. Although it departs from historical accuracy more often than not, it stands as a classic pirate movie with buried treasure, brazen treachery, terrible butchery, and sea battles galore. Some of the roles and those cast to play them are weak and workmanlike, but Reginald Owen complements Laughton nicely as Kidd’s manservant, Shadwell, employed to teach his master the social etiquette he aspires to use in his climb to the peerage, and Henry Daniell succeeds is giving his role as King William III a convincing air of authority and royal puissance. Captain Kidd would have profited from more appropriate casting (Randolph Scott was not the optimum choice for the part of the hero, Adam Mercy), and a few more examples of bloody mêlée would not have gone amiss, but all in all it is worth watching just to see Laughton strutting the deck on the high seas again.

• Writing: Fair
• Directing: Fair
• Acting: Fair (Mediocre to Good)
• Cinematography: Good
• Stunts: Good
• Swordplay: Fair
• Panache: Great (Laughton), Fair (Scott)

Overall Rating: Good
Swashbuckling Rank: Good