When the dastardly Norman king John (Claude Rains) usurps the throne and levies taxes on the people, Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) raises a hand of merry men to fight back.
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“You’re very impudent, aren’t you?”
Released in 1938, as the US was still under the shadow of the Great Depression, the Merry Men’s fight against the wealthy Normans probably carried a relevance beyond the pseudo-historical trappings.
A colourful blast of escapism, this movie is so good as a lark, it makes it look easy.
Last year, I started getting into the old swashbucklers.
I had watched a couple of the more contemporary examples (Mask of Zorro, Pirates of the Caribbean), but I had never gone back to the movies they were riffing on.
Like musicals, swashbucklers were a genre built on set pieces and a sense of escapism.
They are distinct from action movies.
A better descriptive would be to call them adventure movies - they involve more moving between distinct locations and environments, where our protagonists are liable to fall into romance or danger at a moment’s notice.
With their period settings, focus on swordplay, escapes on horses and swinging on ropes to avoid certain death, they can come across as a rejection of modernity. But the vague historical backdrops are generally more of an excuse to shake off any sense of realism.
That is where the comparison to musicals feels appropriate.
Filled with bright, vibrant technicolor and underpinned by an exuberant score, Adventures of Robin Hood is the swashbuckler par excellence.
This is a child’s storybook come to life, filled with rapid action and witty repartee, delivered by a cast who seem to be born for their roles.
Eugene Palette brings his bullfrog-like authority to Friar Tuck, Basil Rathbone is all cold calculation as Guy of Gisborne and Claude Rains is deliciously diabolical as the craven King John.
And then there is Errol Flynn.
Cheeky, athletic, wise-cracking, he embodies the swashbuckler’s flight of fancy and underlying sense of irreverence.
Filled with youthful arrogance and wit, he prevents the movie from ever lurching toward straight-laced melodrama. He seems to be totally in on the joke, but never breaks the fourth wall.
When he strides into the middle of John’s banquet, it is exhilarating. Parrying everyone of the villain’s one-liners with as much ease as he does their swords, he makes it all look easy.
It is not my favourite of the swashbucklers - I think Mark of Zorro still holds that spot - but the sheer ambition and scale of this movie cannot be denied.
After almost a century, the final sword fight between Flynn and Rathbone is still a jaw dropping feat of athleticism and choreography.
I was so jazzed after watching this movie I ran through a couple other swashbucklers (see previous reviews on Mark and The Black Swan).
I left the whole experience exhilarated but a little deflated.
I doubt we will see a traditional swashbuckler again - or at least for a while. do not get made that often.
The Pirates of the Caribbean movies ran aground. Zorro sputtered out after two instalments.
It seems like that heightened sense of adventure has been channelled into superheroes, but there is not a lot of crossover from the older genre.
So what about contemporary adventure pictures?
Mission: Impossible was probably the closest in spirit to the old-school swashbucklers, but appears to be concluded. James Bond is going through another protracted reinvention.
With the superhero gender declining, and older adventure franchises off the big screen, the space is there for the genre to be reborn.
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