Sword Fighting Films - The Prisoner of Zenda

This entry is a bit easier to write, because there are no bad versions of the Prisoner of Zenda. 

There is definitely a best version. 

The best version is the black and white 1937 version with Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks jnr, Raymond Massey and David Niven. 

If, like me, your tastes tend sword-fight-wards, it's one of the greatest films you'll ever see. 

Why do I say this? 

1 - The way it adapts the book. It is such a good adaptation. It digs out all the best parts of the book and dispenses with most of the opening section which is … not good. 

2 - The lighting and set design. Everything looks so good. 

3 - The acting. Ronald Colman does such a good job as both Rudolf Rassendyll and Prince Rudolf. As Rassendyll, he is a good man but tempted, ever so tempted. He makes it believable that Rassendyll might turn on the Prince. (He's also good as the Prince who learns to be better. You believe he will become better for this.) 

You believe C. Aubrey Smith and David Niven when their characters say they know Rassendyll is a good man, probably better than the King, but that if he does betray the King, they will be the first people he has to kill. 

Raymond Massey's take on the line "God save the King" when a Rudolf turns up at the coronation is one of the funniest things you will ever hear. He's so marvellous as Black Michael. (He's Raymond Massey, he's always marvellous) 

And then you have Douglas Fairbanks jnr as Prince Rupert of Hentzau. He's just so perfectly charmingly villainous. There's a reason some part of you cheers when he escapes most consequences. When he leans against a doorway early on he is absolute smouldering desire. In a film with perfect casting, he is the most perfect. 

Prince Rupert can easily overwhelm a film but that's where Ronald Colman's ability to convey decency is so vital (in much the same way as James Cagney gets all the glory for Angels with Dirty Faces, but that film wouldn't work if Pat O'Brien couldn't do decency that well). It also has the best swordfight in Hollywood films (some people suggest the long fight in Scaramouche is better. These people are wrong.)

   

The Stewart Granger, James Mason, Robert Douglas and Robert Coote version from 1952 is often derided as being nothing but a colour remake, and it's true that it's not as good, although their Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr) is stronger. 

There aren't as many other versions of this as there are of several other entries in this series. I'm not sure why. I think it's because it's harder to bend the story to other ways of telling it … although I do like that love makes the good people better and the bad people worse. It's very much set in a time, place and cultural setting. Which makes my choice of something different quite amusing. 

For my something different, I am going with a Doctor Who episode, the Androids of Tara which runs the plot straight into a Doctor Who episode, with added bonus android doubles. It takes that silly premise and runs with it.  

My favourite character is Lamia who is mostly original to the Doctor Who episode (she is the stand in for Antoinette de Mauban but gets more oomph and stuff to do) and I still don't quite forgive it for what they do to her but it does feature Peter Jeffrey as not-Rupert and he is marvellous avuncular evil, which sadly the trailer does not feature enough of. 

It also has the Fourth Doctor pointing out how ridiculous the whole thing is, and swordfighting, where they steal chunks of the Colman fight. 

Given the recent upswing in sword-fighting films, I live in hope we might get a new film for this as well.

Sword Fighting Films - The Three Musketeers

I did warn you all that it would be a very occasional series. There are also spoilers for the book and for the way various films and adaptations vary from the book. 

There are many, many filmed versions of the Three Musketeers, and I will not cover them all. 

The Three Musketeers is an interesting beast. Like all of Dumas's work, there's a deep, multifaceted story hiding underneath the action adventure headline. When they make adaptations, they tend to stick to the broad strokes of the action adventure story. Very broadly, most of the time. That does mean that it's very easy to name the best adaptation of the Three Musketeers.

   

It's easy because it's the only one that passes both my basic requirements: 

1 - None of the Musketeers are presented as an idiot (except you know those moments when they are in the book, D'Artagnan, you hot-headed young fool) 

2 - The Cardinal is an antagonist, not a villain. 

The Cardinal was very much a foundational character for me. Here we have someone who is doing his level best to defeat our heroes, and our heroes are sworn to beat him back but even they admit he is probably a better ruler than the person they're fighting for. They're only against him because they've promised to fight for the King. 

The Cardinal, meanwhile, is a reasonable villain, he only wants what's best for France, and has no time for vendettas. He's not boo-hiss villainy and he doesn't want the crown. He just wants the King to do as he's told. 

And in this film I get *that* played by Vincent Price. (He even gets a white cat to stroke sinisterly.) 

All that, and excellent swordfights - give me a dancer and I can make a fine fencer out of them - and glorious technicolour and Lana Turner in glorious technicolour ... oh it's marvellous and perfect, and actually elides very little of the plot given when it was made. 

A lot of other people like the Michael York/Richard Lester films but for me they fail point 1 - they make Porthos an idiot and I will not stand for this because Porthos is my favourite (please don't tell the others because they are also my favourites). 

The Chris O'Donnell version fails on point 2. The Cardinal is a boo hiss villain in it - I know they had Tim Curry and temptation can be hard to resist but he can do more than just boo hiss villainy - *and* they screw up Milady. The idea of a Milady de Winter who voluntarily throws herself off a cliff misses something/everything about the character. It also messes with her death being at the hands of our heroes (or at least due to their decision to hand her over to the Axeman of Lille), and the question of "what does that make them?" It makes them our beloved, damaged broken heroes, but you know, not necessarily nice. I have had the argument in the "Dumas Club" in real life, and well, I am on Aramis's side. Although, I admit I have occasionally had problems and thought "what would the Musketeers do?" and then immediately done the opposite. As a strategy, it works. 

The Logan Lerman/Paul WS Anderson version is actually solid for all that it changes a lot, and at least it passes points 1 and 2. It could do with more Porthos (Ray Stevenson as Porthos <3 <3 <3) and I have no idea what to do with a version of Athos who gets over himself (I love you really, Athos).  It also has Christoph Waltz giving it quietly sinister as Richelieu and Freddie Fox as an adorbs King Louis and I am generally fonder of it than I ought to be.

Similarly changing everything but with enough charm to get away with it is the recent BBC Musketeers, which is very much in name only but I forgive them.  There are also two old BBC adaptations which I have not seen but would dearly love to, one with Roger Delgado as Athos, and one with Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan and Brian Blessed as Porthos (which my mother has raved about for my entire life, but may have suffered from the BBC wiping it).

If you want something a little different I recommend Dogtanian and the Muskehounds.

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(I, like many of my generation, can sing this song word for word without excessive thought) (If you would like to hear it in a variety of languages, please see here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XQGZ_1sjjI) 

Now Dogtanian does one weird thing, which is switch Athos and Porthos's characters, but none of the Musketeers are idiots and while the Cardinal is mean, he doesn't want to be king. 

Special note, I mean the TV show not the recent film version of this. I'm not sure why the film just didn't work for me while the TV show did but it didn't. 

Avoid at all costs: The Musketeer - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246544/ 

Which is the third worst film I have ever seen. I don't know how you make the Musketeers boring and tedious, but somehow this film manages it. 

Rochefort is now mysteriously called Febre, and it Tim Roth giving it villainy (which he can do, but it just doesn't work in this film). It also has Stephen Rea as Richelieu and somehow doesn't use that to it's own advantage. 

Then again, it's also a version of the Musketeers where Athos only appears in one scene and we never see the Three Inseparables together. It's terrible and I disrecommend it utterly. 

Now for something completely different: I finish with something only partly related to the Three Musketeers, but it's thing of marvel and wonder.  

Philippe Candeloro does proper fencing footwork on ice skates!!! 

No, you need to understand - the number of actors in normal shoes who don't do proper footwork and he's doing it on ice skates. 

Technically accurate footwork on ice skates!!! 

(It is also my second favourite men's programme ever. The only thing that beats it is Yagudin's Winter short programme [although Yagudin's Man in the Iron Mask is not bad either.])

Sword fighting films - Robin Hood

This is the first in an irregular series of posts about films with sword fights. Although they're all part of a series, the formats will be slightly different, for reasons which will become clear as the posts occur.

Some time ago, in a post about the 1938 Oscars, NWhyte wrote that he'd never seen the Errol Flynn Robin Hood. I was surprised, but looking back on it, I'm not sure why, because former housemate P didn't watch it until his mid-20s, and as a fencer, he'd had more reason for watching it. 

Following on from that post, I wondered which sword-fighting films I would recommend for people to watch. And then I realised I'd watched a lot, and probably needed a way of splitting them up, so I am writing about them by topic, starting with Robin Hood, since it was the Errol Flynn version that kick-started this idea. 

Robin Hood

Must watch: As you may have guessed from that intro, as far as I'm concerned the Errol Flynn version is the best film version. 

Partly it's Flynn himself, in all his charming, insouciant glory, but there's also Olivia de Havilland as a beautiful, charming and courageous Maid Marian, Claude Reins and Basil Rathbone as excellent villains, and comic relief characters who get to be both funny and heroic. 

Of course, the fight scenes are famous for a reason (spoilers for the big end fight). It's amazing what you can do when one of your principals is a fencer. 

Ex-housemate P didn't like it because it wasn't flash enough for him and too slow, but he was more than occasionally wrong about films (he didn't like Casablanca). His favourite version will be mentioned shortly. 

In the same vein: The Richard Todd and Richard Greene versions of Robin Hood stick closely to the Errol Flynn model, and the Richard Greene TV version is one of my family's favourite ways to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

Something different: The Disney Robin Hood is actually my favourite version. However, because it's animated, I have to admit that the sword fights aren't all that. On the other hand, there are some truly excellent villains, an adorable Robin and Maid Marian, one of my favourite Friar Tuck's (seriously, watching him go full "badger don't care" at the Sheriff is glorious), excellent music (A Pox On The Phoney King of England, Not In Nottingham) and Lady Cluck. 

I could write whole essays on how Lady Cluck is just the best (which she is), but I shall provide video evidence instead:  

Anyone who has ever seen me do sports may recognise a certain similarity in both shape and attitude.  
The Disney Robin Hood is an hour and a half of sheer sugar candy joy. 

Other options: 

The ITV Robin Hood, Robin of Sherwood, which is housemate P's favourite. I happen to think it's New-Agey, pseudo-realistic nonsense, but several other people I know like it. 

I also blame it for several of the modern Robin Hood cliches. It popularised one of the Merry Men being a Saracen, Will Scarlet being an (angry) working class man rather than Robin's cousin, and Robin going off to the Crusades before the story starts. This annoys me. It's like, 'why are you doing this to the character and the story, not going to the Crusades it what gets him outlawed in the first place?!!!' 

I find it interesting that in 1938 you could get away with a Robin who says "no way, you go fight your own pointless war if you want to but I am staying here to protect my people" whereas nowadays you can't. I don't know how much of that was due to US isolationist policies pre-WW2 and general public opinion, or wanting to stay close to the original legend, but it's an interesting difference.

I like that Robin doesn't go to war, despite the threat of being outlawed if he doesn't. He goes ahead and follows his conscience. It makes him a more impressive hero. It's all well and good to show him fighting against a prince who has usurped power, but for him to disobey someone who he regards as the rightful king, with all the moral and legal force that implies, now that's a different thing. 

If storytellers want to have a story with a Crusader veteran horrified with what they'd seen for the one (and it's only ever one) PTSD-related episode or section, then Will Scarlet, nobleman with fewer reservations than Robin, seems like an excellent choice. He already canonically wanders around a forest wearing red, which I think might well be described as a death-wish. 

Unnecessarily long story short - I don't particularly like this version, although I do recognise that it has its own distinctive feel, and does its own thing its own way, which I admire. 

The Patrick Bergin Robin Hood, which was unlucky enough to have been released at the cinema at the same time as the Kevin Costner version. I prefer it, even if it is a bit heavy-handed. Also, it has Owen Teale's Little John and is about the only modern version that gives Little John anything to do. (Why do modern versions give all/most of Little John's important bits to Nasir/Azeem?) 

Avoid: 
The BBC's 2006 Robin Hood - But, I hear you cry, you spent far too much time watching it. And this is true, any time spent watching it would be too much.
via GIPHY

Basically the BBC Robin Hood was one very good performance, four good performances and Keith Allen eating more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of scenery, being hamstrung by increasingly poor and peculiar authorial choices on the part of the writers. 

The Kevin Costner version (mild spoilers ensue) - I am about to be accused of being mean, and it's not just that they hew very closely to Robin of Sherwood to the point where you think they should have paid licencing fees, but I can explain my objection to the film in four words: Will Scarlet would never. I don't mean this Will Scarlet, I mean any Will Scarlet. In fact, having any Merry Man betray the rest is a good way of ending up in the avoid list. Even Alan Rickman's glorious, vivid and vile Sheriff of Nottingham cannot save this film, nor can Morgan Freeman and Michael McShane. It is un-salvagable. 

If anyone has any other Robin Hood recommendations, please send them my way. It's a legend I never tire of.