Cuparia

Captain Scarlett (1953) is a run-of-the-mill swashbuckling yawn, excuse me, yarn set in 19th century France, but you will be forgiven if you quip, “A nice day for a fiesta in sunny Mexico” as you watch it. It was filmed in Mexico, and there was little, if anything, to suggest a French setting except place names. The story is an obviously hybridized bastardization of Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and — given the Mexican flavor of the costuming, architecture, and landscape — even Zorro. In short, Robin Hood, I mean Captain Scarlett, with the help of Friar Tuck, I mean Fray Felipe, I mean The Friar, frees a number of wronged people (including one Princess Maria) who become his band of merry men (or rather his band of one merry man and one woman who can allegedly pass as a merry man) as they rescue peasants from the guillotine, the toll road collector, and harassment by a couple of soldiers. The evil Alcalde, I mean Sheriff of Nottingham, I mean Duke de Corlaine tries every diabolical trick at his disposal to neutralize the destabilizing effect Captain Scarlett is supposedly having on the populace by neutralizing Captain Scarlett himself, but the wily swordsman is not such an easy pest to remove, and there is more than altruism to Scarlett’s motives, for it was the Duke who unlawfully deprived him of his land and led him to this life of highway robbery, adventure, camaraderie, etc. in the first place.

The plot is derivative, the dialogue is inept, and the acting causes irritation, discomfort, and drowsiness. Other symptoms may include disbelief, disapproval, and disdain. Attention paid to the action scenes WILL cause disappointment. Use only as advised: with the intent to mock.

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

Overall Rating: Terrible
Swashbuckling Rank: Poor

What happens when a woman from Boston stows away on a ship that is captured by pirates? In Buccaneer’s Girl (1950), she sings and dances her way into everyone’s heart, especially the pirate captain’s, whilst guarding a secret that would rock her newly adopted home of New Orleans should it be discovered.

Yvonne De Carlo plays Deborah McCoy, the fearless, streetwise heroine whose life and fate become intertwined with the debonair buccaneer Frederic Baptiste played by Philip Friend. Baptiste is a humane and gallant pirate captain who inspires loyalty and respect. He is, in a word, a gentleman. McCoy, in contrast, is no lady. Any of the manners she displays were learned from Madame Brizar (Elsa Lanchester), the headmistress of a local school for women specializing in singing and dance instruction. Manners, for McCoy, are a means to an end, which, in her case, is a better life. Baptiste, on the other hand, is motivated by a sense of justice to commit crimes on the high seas, and the beneficiaries of his exploits are, as in the case of Robin Hood and Zorro, those who have been wronged by the rich and powerful.

There is, as a result, the mayhem of armed conflict and amorous conflict as different worlds collide, but in both instances the excitement is minimal. The combat scenes are bloodless, uneventful affairs, which is a fair description of the love scenes as well. The plot seems to be an excuse to give the lead actress some singing time in routines that are frankly more suited for a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby comedy than an historical action movie.

Buccaneer’s Girl is a semi-comedic, semi-romantic, semi-adventurous near musical with piratical trappings. To call it a swashbuckling movie would be to dilute the definition. It could charitably be called a romantic comedy, but more by virtue of the filmmakers’ intentions than by results. It may provide light entertainment or background noise for 77 minutes, but little more than that.

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

Overall Rating: Mediocre
Swashbuckling Rank: Mediocre

Against All Flags (1952) is a story of swashbuckling espionage set in Madagascar in the year 1700. Brian Hawke, played by Errol Flynn, is an officer in the Royal Navy whose mission is to infiltrate a fortified settlement of pirates who threaten trade in the Indian Ocean. Presenting himself as a deserter who now desires to join the pirates and sail “against all flags,” Hawke must allay suspicions that he is a spy as he attempts to learn the pirates’ defenses.

There are, however, complications, and foremost among them is the daughter of the Grand Mogul whom he saves from a burning ship and whose true identity he must conceal lest the pirates ransom her or worse, which would put at risk the life of every Englishman in India. Mistress Stevens is the other complication. Otherwise known as “Spitfire” (and played accordingly by Maureen O’Hara), Stevens is a strong-willed woman with her own ship, which entitles her to a place amongst the captains who rule the pirate port. Both women take an interest in Hawke and, well, that accounts for half the story.

There are many attempts throughout the film to convey the bravado, wit, and charm of Flynn’s classic swashbuckling forays, but it is merely superficial when there is no greater drama to support it. The importance of stopping the pirates is undermined by both the lack of commitment by the Royal Navy (one ship to destroy an entire fortified port?) and the buffoonery of its officers (of a kind more in keeping with Gilbert and Sullivan than with reality). The importance of defending the honor of the Grand Mogul’s daughter is rather compromised by the lighthearted portrayal of women being sold at auction as “lawful wedded wives” to pirates, one of whom asks upon purchasing his spouse, “Now that I got her, what does I do with her?” The importance of any serious aspect of the story whatsoever is utterly deflated by the stilted dialogue, the unconvincing sets, the freshly laundered costumes of nearly every ne’er-do-well inhabitant of the pirate port, and the clownish acting of every actor in the film with the exception, to a degree, of Flynn, O’Hara, and perhaps the two actors playing Hawke’s subordinates, Jones and Harris (Phil Tully and John Alderson).

Flynn seems obviously tired in this film, but O’Hara manages to infuse her role with as much subtlety and energy in the right places as the shallow writing will allow. Anthony Quinn, who plays Captain Brasiliano, the chief villain, plays his role as it was probably written: as a loud, cloddish bully. The worst performances belong to Bill Radovich as Hassan, the eunuch on the Grand Mogul’s ship (giving what appears to be an impersonation of Curly Joe Dorita), and Paul Newlan as Crop-ear, the pirate who doesn’t know what do with the “wife” he bought. They were undoubtedly intended as comic relief, but the only relief they provided was their absence.

At another time, with another writer, another director, another studio, and a change of almost the entire cast, Against All Flags might have been a good romantic adventure in the swashbuckling tradition. Instead, it is a lighthearted musical with only one song (a sea chantey sung by Flynn) performed as if by a local community theatre. Against All Flags is not entirely without its merits, but they are easier to observe if one’s expectations are low.

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

Overall Rating: Mediocre
Swashbuckling Rank: Fair

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