The legend of Robin Hood is one of those stories everybody knows, but which has never really clicked with me. I’m curious why it has endured as long as it has. It seems, even today, somebody feels compelled to make another movie or television series of it from time to time.
I doubt anybody will ever be able to improve upon 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. While I can’t say I was fully engaged throughout its one and three-quarter hours, I was still quite impressed with a picture whose audience which saw it in its original run is almost entirely dead by now.
This kind of fare normally feels like a history lesson to me, and that aspect of it often makes it difficult for me to feign an interest. It’s odd that I feel the same way about anything concerning King Arthur and his knights, unless the film is made by Monty Python. Yes, I know King Arthur wasn’t real, thank you, and neither was Robin Hood. It is only the nature of the material that scans for me as a type of edutainment.
Aside from a few text cards, this picture wisely lets the background information be conveyed through dialog, which made it easier for me to absorb. It is the time of the Crusades, and the Saxon king of England has gone to fight in them. In his place is the Norman government, with his brother assuming interim control of the country. Turns out what was intended to be a temporary change in management has designs on making that permanent.
An impossibly young Claude Rains plays that duplicitous brother. Mad with power, he is desperate to be crowned the king. He is also taxing and starving the populace, to literal death in some instances. Dialog reveals the soldiers are even torturing, maiming and raping peasants, which gives this film a feeling of higher stakes than in some other adaptations. Basil Rathbone plays his ruthless second-in-command, in the kind of role the actor excelled at. The film also makes excellent use of Rathbone’s real-life fencing expertise.
Error Flynn is the title character. I have not seen him in a movie before and I was curious why he was such a huge star in his time. Having now seen this picture, I can now understand. This is the kind of perfect confluence of personality and role that makes a career.
When we first see Flynn, he is intervening to keep a peasant from being killed after the man had slain a deer. One of Rains’s draconian policies was to declare all deer to be property of the king. I guess that makes more sense than the real British policy that makes the King or Queen owner of the nation’s wild swans on the Thames. I doubt most people want to eat a swan. Also, those fuckers are mean and dangerous. Probably better to mess with most deer, given the choice.
Flynn arrives at the royal castle during a banquet, with that deer slung over his shoulders. Having made what appears to be an act of contrition, Rains invites the man to eat with them. Conversation soon reveals Flynn is completely opposed to the current administration. The dialog in this scene is stellar, with Rains telling Flynn, “Such insolence must fuel quite an appetite.” Also at banquet table is Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian, who is appalled at Flynn’s accusations: “Why, you speak treason.” And his reply: “Fluently.”
Soon, Flynn is flying all around the room, as are many arrows. Some of those arrows appeared to have been actually launched from bows. While this makes such action scenes more exciting, I wondered how dangerous this shoot might have been.
From here, the tale largely unfolds in the usual way, and I started to find my attention waning. You know the drill. Encountering various rogues in the forest who will go on to be part of his band of merry men. The archery tournament. Restoring the rightful king to his throne. Yada yada yada. Still, there’s satisfaction to be found when any tale is told well, even if it is one everybody somehow already knows.
Of these interim scenes, the one of those which was most interesting to me was Alan Hale and Flynn fighting with staffs, in a bit famously parodied in that Looney Tunes starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. What’s nice is that cartoon short is among the wealth of extras on this blu-ray. Even better is the scene where Flynn first meets Eugene Pallette, as Friar Tuck. I am a big fan of Pallette, an actor who excelled in small parts in many films, with his trademark gruff and direct manner.
The film ends strong, with a huge action sequence in the royal castle. That Flynn supposedly did his own stunts is astonishing. And I love it when a film as old as this one can surprise me.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone
Watched on blu-ray