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"Poets make live again the days of chivalry." Towering sets lend the production a monumentality worn lightly by Douglas Fairbanks and Allan Dwan, vast medieval halls in their hands become personal gymnasiums and giant pinball machines. The famous smiling visage is introduced behind an armor helmet, the Earl of Huntingdon wins the jousting tournament only to face his true fear, a swarm of maidens that leads to a dip in the river. Richard the Lionheart (Wallace Beery) is a jovial monarch, too busy tearing into a leg of lamb to notice his blackhearted brother John (Sam De Grasse) scheming to seize the throne while he's away in the Crusades. (Sternberg in The Scarlet Empress vividly emulates the usurper's reign of terror.) The hero's double identity launches the tale's second half, Robin Hood with feather cap and spangled tunic and zipping arrows. "A robber knight, eh?" A robust, charming spectacle, as big as Griffith or Lang but continuously brought down to human size by humor and grace. Lady Marian (Enid Bennett) fakes her own death to flee the villain and hides in a stony priory, celestial beams bathe her reunion with her beloved. Little John (Alan Hale) is an ursine squire, Friar Tuck (Willard Louis) wields a mean staff: "I'll knop your scop!" A ticklish dash of action welcomes the invaders of Sherwood Forest—Robin climbs up a tree and leaps onto a branch, which curves down to the foe who's readily kicked off his horse. The gargantuan diagonals of the drawbridge and the intimate contours of the charcoal drawing, the opposite poles of cinema harmonized by the Fairbanks bound, "the very backbone of adventure." Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster and Jackie Chan carry the torch onward. With Paul Dickey, Bud Geary, William Lowery, and Billie Bennett. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |