The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Director Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
Screenplay Norman Reilly Raine, Seton I. Miller
Starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale, Melville Cooper, Ian Hunter, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin
Running time 102 mins | Colour Technicolor
Legendary English outlaw Robin Hood gets the full classic Hollywood treatment in this lavish 1938 spectacular, starring Errol Flynn in what would become his most famous role.
England at the end of the twelfth century is beset by discord between the Saxons and their Norman rulers. The situation deteriorates when King Richard the Lionheart (Ian Hunter) is captured while travelling through Austria and is held to ransom.
With the King away, the country is in the hands of Richard's brother, Prince John (Claude Rains). But John is a greedy tyrant, who oppresses the population and squeezes every possible groat from them in taxation. Richard's capture acts as a convenient excuse for him to increase taxes even further, on the pretext that this is to pay for his brother's ransom.
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| Errol Flynn in heroic pose as Robin Hood |
In reality, Prince John is simply greedy and has no intention of paying for the King's release. Instead he intends to usurp the throne and have himself crowned in Richard's absence, with the aid of his lieutenants, Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper).
One Saxon, though, stands against him and remains loyal to King Richard. This is Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn). When Prince John announces his intention to pronounce himself king, Robin declares his opposition and is forced to become an outlaw.
Robin retreats to the safety of Sherwood Forest where he assembles an army of fellow outlaws, including Little John (Alan Hale), Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette), Much (Herbert Mundin) and Robin's faithful friend Will Scarlet (Patric Knowles).
From his hideout in the forest, Robin pits himself against Prince John, taking back the taxes he has extracted from the poor and taking his own levy from the wealthy who can afford to pay. Meanwhile, he is also secretly romancing Prince John's ward, the beautiful Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland).
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By 1938, the Robin Hood legend had already provided the basis for one Hollywood blockbuster, the enormously popular 1922 silent film Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks. But The Adventures of Robin Hood was still able to outstrip it, not only by using sound, but also by boasting the still novel use of full colour. The film was, in fact, the first film made by Warner Brothers to use the three-strip Technicolor process.
The film was one of the most expensive of its era, at a cost estimated at $2 million. That's not altogether unexpected, given its plentiful action sequences and the lavish sets and costumes on display. Directorial duties were split between Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, although opinions vary as to why this was.
A little surprisingly, the studio responsible for the film was Warner Brothers, better known in this era for their terse gangster films. But Warners were also developing a nice line in swashbucklers by the mid-1930s. One of these, Captain Blood in 1935, had helped to make a star of Errol Flynn.
The Adventures of Robin Hood reunited Flynn with Olivia de Havilland, his co-star in previous hits Captain Blood and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), making this an obvious star pairing. The two actors were teamed again after this in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Dodge City (1940), Santa Fe Trail (1940) and They Died with Their Boots On (1941).
Surprisingly though, The Adventures of Robin Hood was not originally intended to star Errol Flynn at all but, almost incredibly, another Warner Bros. star, James Cagney. It's almost impossible now to imagine the tough, diminutive, firmly contemporary - and very American - James Cagney playing Robin Hood and, fortunately, a change of heart saw him replaced by Flynn.
The film boasts a strong, largely British supporting cast, with Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone and Melville Cooper as the film's trio of principal villains. This preponderance of British actors does mean that the characters can all pronounce "Nottingham" correctly, which isn't always the case in Hollywood Robin Hood films.
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| Little John (Alan Hale) meets Robin |
Errol Flynn himself was born in Tasmania in Australia, but was plausible enough as an Englishman. Flynn may not have been one of the great screen actors, but he was one of this era's great screen stars, at least in these kind of films, and he had the lightness of touch and the charm required to carry this role off.
Flynn's Robin Hood is handsome, cocksure and confident - but also romantic, moral and principled. Robin isn't perfect, though, and he is something of a jerk to poor old Friar Tuck when they first meet, but it's still hard to hold it against him.
The film's best performance comes from the reliably excellent Claude Rains as the chief villain. This is despite the actor labouring under an unfortunate fringe as a slightly effete Prince John. Rains is effortlessly villainous, but also plausibly so, his jealousy and desire for power, now that his brother is out of the way, all too credibly portrayed.
Modern viewers may be surprised to learn that the other chief antagonist for Robin Hood in this film is not the Sheriff of Nottingham but Sir Guy of Gisbourne. He is ideally incarnated in this version by the dashing and incisive Basil Rathbone. Rathbone was increasingly typecast as villains by this point in his career, although he was only a year away from beginning a highly successful run as Sherlock Holmes in a 14 film series that would run until the mid-1940s.
The scheming and supercilious Prince John and the malevolent but commanding Guy of Gisbourne make for a strong villainous pairing. They are augmented by Melville Cooper as the Sheriff of Nottingham, who in this version is a vaguely bumbling, slightly comical character, played more as a figure of fun, although he does come up with the idea of an archery contest to capture Robin.
The film features several scenes of ordinary people being mistreated, abused or about to be hung, and of women being grabbed and molested by Norman soldiers. This is slightly unexpected, given the film's otherwise irrepressible high spirits and good humour. But it does raise the stakes, confirming to the audience that the ordinary people are being horribly oppressed by Prince John and his cohorts.
Among Robin's "merry men" the very American Eugene Pallette makes his mark as a comical Friar Tuck, while Alan Hale lends sturdy support as Little John. This would be a recurring role for Alan Hale, who played the same part in the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks film and in the 1950 film Rogues of Sherwood Forest.
Olivia de Havilland is not greatly taxed as Marian, although she is appealing enough, and Ian Hunter makes for a noble King Richard, in a portrayal firmly in line with the legend rather than the reality.
The merry men are employed partly for comic relief, particularly Herbert Mundin as Much, who enjoys an unlikely romance with Marian's maid Bess (Una O'Connor). This allows the film to indulge in a surprising degree of playful innuendo.
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| Olivia de Havilland as Marian |
The film includes many of the popular elements of the Robin Hood legend, not only in the familiar characters - including Robin, Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, Guy of Gisbourne and the Sheriff of Nottingham - but also the memorable incidents. These include Robin's first meeting with Little John, who is blocking his way across a river, leading the two into a fight using tree branches as weapons. There is also Robin's capturing of the tax collector's convoy and the archery contest designed to lure him into the villains' clutches.
The archery contest is a rather transparent ploy to capture Robin and the obvious implication might be that it's Robin's vanity that makes him unable to resist taking part, since he believes himself to be by far the best archer.
In the film, though, Robin's participation is presented as being in the full knowledge (or at least the suspicion) that the archery competition is a trap. He and his men had recently captured Guy of Gisbourne and forced him to share a meal with them. So Robin replies to the others, when they point out that the contest is probably a trap:
"Where's your sporting blood? Sir Guy accepted our invitation, it would be rude not to accept his."
It's not vanity then, but some of Robin's more admirable qualities, including his sense of fun and sport and his irrepressible desire for adventure, that encourage him to take part. Indeed, Robin is so fair and sporting that when Guy of Gisbourne loses his sword during their climactic duel, he gives it back to him, so that they can continue the fight. Simply running the villain through would be unsportsmanlike.
In this version of the story, Robin is already a defender of the downtrodden Saxons and a troublemaker to the Norman authorities, so his becoming an outlaw is not a very great leap. The film later has Prince John refer to Robin's manor and estate being confiscated. This means that Robin has a reasonably grand house and lands and presumably many workers depending on him, but they are never seen or mentioned again. Like most Robin Hood films, it also skips any explanation as to how Robin comes to be known by that name, although it's one that the other characters are using freely later in the film.
The Robin Hood legend is an unrivalled example of an outlaw figure coming to be made respectable, as the story was softened over time to make it acceptable to all. Ordinary people have long enjoyed tales of robbers and outlaws, from highwaymen to the Great Train Robbers, because they have an element of wish-fulfilment, of outwitting the system and getting one over on the ruling class.
Over time, tales about a notorious highway robber were romanticised into a story about a thief who is really a hero, because he only steals from the greedy rich and gives the money to the poor. As the Robin Hood story became more popular still, it was sanitised further into a version that could be embraced by the establishment. Instead of a common thief, Robin is turned into an exiled nobleman and he is fighting the ruling classes only because he is supporting the true king. This means that, in trying to overthrow the current ruler, he is actually trying to reassert the old order. The outlaw thus becomes a figure of the establishment, instead of its challenger.
This unusual mixture of elements is probably the reason why the Robin Hood legend has endured for so long, plausibly embodying both the establishment and the anti-establishment, the ruling and the ruled, the criminal and the noble, the lord and the outlaw.
Despite this sanitizing and appropriation of the story, Robin's stealing from the rich and (in the now more morally acceptable version) giving the money to the poor, remains a key part of the legend, meaning that there is always an element of social critique, even if it is softened by the other elements.
In The Adventures of Robin Hood, when Robin and his men ambush the convoy carrying taxes extracted from the poor by Guy of Gisbourne, they invite Guy and the Sheriff to join them in their feast afterwards. It's in these scenes that we see the redistributive fantasy in full swing. The results of Robin's redistribution of wealth are, as he explains, food and clothing for all, instead of finery for the rich and hunger for the poor. It's the kind of thing that would have got everyone involved in the film in trouble with HUAC after the war for such proto-communist ideas, if it wasn't for the cover of it being based on the Robin Hood legend.
When a British TV series, also called The Adventures of Robin Hood, was made in the fifties, it attracted several American screenwriters who had been blacklisted in the US and who apparently appreciated this element of the story.
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| Basil Rathbone as Guy of Gisbourne |
The feast in the woods sequence does include an almost unintentionally comical scene, when Robin introduces Marian to the poor and dispossessed people he has rescued. They are kept discreetly hidden away behind some trees, presumably to stop them from spoiling everyone else's meal. This makes the scene uncomfortably reminiscent of the Robin Hood interlude in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981), when John Cleese as Robin introduces the time travellers to the locals, asking them "Have you met the poor?"
Fortunately, in The Adventures of Robin Hood all of Robin's outlaw army are loyal to King Richard and, when asked what they want to do with the money they have "liberated", they all answer as one that they want to use it to pay his ransom. Which is not at all plausible and probably not a very good use of such riches, but it does mean that they are all essentially on the establishment side too, as loyal subjects of the King.
This "official" version of the Robin Hood story is portrayed very satisfactorily in The Adventures of Robin Hood, to the extent that it's become virtually the definitive screen version. It helps too that, on a technical level, the production is excellent.
The film's grand sets designed by Carl Jules Weyl, especially its medieval castle interiors, are handsomely photographed in Technicolor by Tony Gaudio and Sol Polito, and the location filming plausibly recreates England in some of the greener parts of California. These included Sherwood Lake, which had been named for its role in the 1922 film, and Bidwell Park.
The costumes, designed by Milo Anderson, are colourful and distinctive, even if they do look a little like they've just come from a theatrical costumers or a fancy dress shop. Robin's much copied green outfit adds a slight air of pantomime, with the choice of tights as legwear seeming particularly unlikely. Fortunately, the top Robin is wearing is just about long enough to cover his shortcomings.
The action sequences in the film are frequent and energetic, and display excellent stunt work, with one or two ideas borrowed from the 1922 film. Men clamber castle walls, swing from vines like Tarzan or leap onto horses, while Errol Flynn swings his sword around with such dash and elan that you might think that it's just a lightweight prop one.
The film is topped by a wonderful, enthusiastic score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who provides one of the most popular and influential film scores of the 1930s. Korngold's bold scoring makes every scene seem that much more exciting although, ironically, he was originally reluctant to take the assignment, believing himself unsuited to scoring "action" films. The film would win him the Academy Award for best original score.
The film's script, by Seton I. Miller and Norman Reilly Raine, is well structured and has plenty of charming "ye olde worlde" language: "By my faith, but you're a bold rascal!" says Prince John to Robin, in a typically colourful line of dialogue. There is also plenty of playful interplay between the characters. "Why, you speak treason", says a shocked Marian to Robin. "Fluently", he replies with appropriate insouciance.
Nearly a hundred years after it was made, the film has still not been bettered as a traditional retelling of the Robin Hood legend. It has also been highly influential on other screen treatments of this story, as well as on how Robin Hood is seen more generally. So much so that Mel Brooks was still trying to parody this film more than 50 years later in his 1993 spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
While Errol Flynn's later screen career suffered from revelations about his private life, Robin Hood's continued unabated in the 1940s and 1950s, albeit mostly in second tier efforts. These included several made by Hammer, as well as two Disney films - a live action version in the 1950s (with Richard Todd) and an anthropomorphised cartoon in the 1970s.
Robin Hood was also the star of popular TV series in the 1950s (starring Richard Greene), the 1980s (Robin of Sherwood, with Michael Praed and then Jason Connery) and the 2000s (Robin Hood, with Jonas Armstrong).
Robin Hood still gets the lavish, big screen treatment every decade or so. Notable examples include Sean Connery as a middle-aged Robin in the melancholy Robin and Marian in 1976, Kevin Costner in the lively if anachronistic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, and Russell Crowe in the rather more dour origins story Robin Hood in 2010.
Errol Flynn - Robin Hood
Cinematography Tony Gaudio, Sol Polito Art Director Carl Jules Weyl Editor Ralph Dawson Music Erich Wolfgang Korngold Musical director Leo F. Forbstein Costumes Milo Anderson Sound C. A. Riggs Dialogue director Irving Rapper
Production company Warner Bros.-First National Pictures
Distributor Warner Bros. (US), First National Pictures (UK)
Incredibly, this is still the best Robin Hood movie. I do have a soft spot for Robin and Marian (1976), which plays out like an epilogue to the 1938 production. I also enjoyed Disney's The Story of Robin Hood (1952). Anyhow, I don't know who thought Cagney could be a great a Robin Hood! As you said, he is, like Bogie, too modern, which why I can't accept him in a western either.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's hard to imagine Cagney playing the part. It probably would have ended up like a strange Warners gangster film with everyone in period costume.
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