esrosedotblog

TODAY'S MOVIE

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938); NYTimes1176BestMovies; Errol Flynn and every medium to well known British actor they could find to fill out the large cast. Claude Rains is the evil King John. Basil Rathbone is his villainous henchman and ass-kisser, Sir Guy of Gisbourne.. Olivia DeHaviland is Maid Marian. The young Una O'connor is the maid. It is a great picture. Moves along. We know the story so it has to keep us busy looking at the action and this is done very effectively. NOTE: There is not ONE computer generated mass of armies, no monsters, and almost all the stunts are done by the actors themselves. The arrows actually hit the padded stuntmen (they got extra money) and the split arrow scene was real and done in one take. This film has more life than most of the current batch of 'adventure' films.

Errol Flynn was a great actor, not above doing a lot of hambone stuff in his closeups; his Irish sense of humor; good 'over-the-top' underlining. The term swash-buckler was made for him. He was also able to carry the swash outside the films and led a hard and fast life with a heart-attack-death at 50. In this film, he and Rathbone do a long swordfight which is suspenseful and innovative in its use of props, stairs, shadows and so on. It is a primer on how to do the thing. And, he is gorgeous. It is unbelievable that they originally wanted to do this with James Cagney.

The color on this DVD is so brilliantly restored that, for awhile, I was afraid that it had been colorized but that is not so. It was shot in Technicolor and that is how the master prints looked. The prints shown in theaters were never as good as the original. It has an unprecedented 8.2 on the IMDb review scale. I give it a four out of Netflixfive.