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DVD Prince Valiant
Cartoonist Hal Foster's medieval hero, the Scandinavian Prince Valiant, comes to the screen in all his Dutch-bob-haircut glory in this 1954 film directed by Henry Hathaway (Kiss of Death). Robert Wagner plays the title role and does a bang-up job of it, convincingly portraying the heroic prince as he enters the court of King Arthur (Brian Aherne) in England and becomes (with some tutelage from Sir Gawain, played by Sterling Hayden) a Knight of the Round Table. Determined to restore his dethroned family to their proper seat back home, Valiant takes on the Black Knight (James Mason), who plans to do away with Arthur and then finish his misdeeds back in Scandia. Under such pressure, the prince, quite understandably, falls in love with Princess Aleta (Janet Leigh). Hathaway proves to be the perfect director for this material, as his fluid skill, moderate forcefulness, and adaptability to genre necessities keep the film from teetering too far in the direction of pulp--or self-seriousness. --Tom Keogh
Prince Valiant is old school Hollywood - when good was really corny Christian Vikings and evil was the Black Knight (who was also probably a Christian) in league with a group of not quite yet Christian Vikings. This movie is a lot of campy fun with over the top performances by Wagner, Mason and Leigh (she is just magnetic for Hollywood Vikings, it seems!). That being said, there are two really wonderful scenes near the end of the movie that combine a very stirring score with spunky action on the part of Robert Wagner (the vindication for his really bad hair day during the first 3 acts of the film).
A mixed bag
Prince Valiant is a reminder of movie making of the 1950s, both its strengths and (at least perceived) weaknesses. Filmed in rich color, the story is one a child of those times now in his sixties can understand why he enjoyed it enough then to go to the theater four times (a large number of visits back then) to watch Valiant succeed against the Black Knight. It still has the action and large-horn helmeted Vikings to enchant the child that remains in a person of those times. But the film also seems to indicate that its intent was also part of a message in favor of the blacklisting and witch hunts of those times, as it repeatedly makes reference to Christians against heathens. At the same time, such battles were going on in Europe around the time of King Arthur, certainly they were a part of the literature of the times of early Arthurian legend. Maybe that's all there is to it and nothing more.
Disappointment
As a great fan of the Prince Valiant comic strip, I was eager to
see this film. If only the producers had spent as much on writers and research as they spent on locations and photography they might have had something other than camp. You will get to see Stirling Hayden before he learned to act and Vikings out of a parody of Wagnerian opera. If you want sword-play, plot and real acting, with authenticity and stunning scenery watch "The Vikings".
Among the most exciting of MGM swashbucklers, Richard Thorpe's 1952 Ivanhoe stars Robert Taylor as the medieval hero of Sir Walter Scott's novel. Returning to England from the Third Crusades, Ivanhoe is steadfast in his determination to raise the ransom for the captured King Richard (Norman Wooland), but the effort is full of peril. First is Ivanhoe's reunion with his estranged father (Finlay Currie), a Saxon who hates the Norman king and refuses to give his son the money. Then there's Ivanhoe's unpopular rescue of a wealthy Jew, Isaac (Felix Aylmer), from anti-Semites, and the subsequent decision by Isaac's beautiful daughter, Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor), to pay Ivanhoe's entry fee in a tournament. (The strapped knight seeks the tourney's cash prize.) Wait, it gets worse: two of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Taylor - Elizabeth Taylor - Joan Fontaine Director(s): Richard Thorpe DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1953 follow-up to the successful teaming of actor Robert Taylor and director Richard Thorpe on Ivanhoe isn't quite as good a film, but it is a sumptuous adventure-romance shot on location in England. MGM's first widescreen production finds Taylor playing Sir Lancelot to Mel Ferrer's King Arthur. Based in part on Thomas Malory's 14th-century version of the Camelot legend, Knights of the Round Table tells the familiar tale of Arthur's construction of a Utopian kingdom, where virtue, courage, and a sense of possibility rule the hearts of strong men. Lancelot is there every step of the way, but after Arthur marries a particularly bodacious Guinevere (Ava Gardner), Lancelot can't stifle his love for her, nor can she stifle her own for him. That chink in the wall of the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Taylor - Ava Gardner - Mel Ferrer Director(s): Richard Thorpe DVD Release Date: Released the 01 July 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Adventure yarns don’t come more ripping than King Solomon’s Mines, the classic Great White Hunter tale. Novelist H. Rider Haggard’s hero, Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger), reluctantly agrees to lead an Englishwoman (Deborah Kerr) and her brother (Richard Carlson) deep into uncharted territory in Africa, in search of the lady’s lost husband. What follows is a cavalcade of boys’ adventure stuff: charging rhinos, cannibals, an incredible wildlife stampede, and the back-of-the-neck-tingly thrill of venturing into unmapped lands. The location shooting, including tribal rituals, is marvelous throughout, and the movie manages to pack a great deal of material into 102 minutes without ever seeming rushed. A remake of a 1937 film, King Solomon’s Mines... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Deborah Kerr - Stewart Granger Director(s): Andrew Marton - Compton Bennett DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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