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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is one of the greatest, most colorful costume dramas, swashbucklers, and romantically-tinged adventure films in film history. After the icy restrictions placed on the film industry following the... See more » The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is one of the greatest, most colorful costume dramas, swashbucklers, and romantically-tinged adventure films in film history. After the icy restrictions placed on the film industry following the establishment of the Production Code Administration (Breen Office) in the mid 1930s, Warner Bros. Studios decided to find relief from censorship by bringing about a renaissance of the historical-costume adventure film, with swordplay, sweeping action, and romantic charm. Although its star had portrayed a similar role in Captain Blood (1935) with the same dynamic director, Michael Curtiz (who quickly replaced William Keighley when incapacitated by illness, according to some sources), this film established 29 year-old actor Errol Flynn as a dashing, gallant, romantic, impudent but light-hearted, athletic legendary adventure hero - it is the Errol Flynn picture and the definitive film portraying the Robin Hood legend. [This was another of the twelve films that Curtiz ultimately directed with Flynn as star.] It expertly tells the story of the heroic Robin and his Sherwood Forest followers, who saved England from royal treachery by scheming nobles during the absence of the crusading and captured-ransomed King Richard the Lion-Hearted. And it tells the fairy-tale romance with nostalgic chivalry, colorful pageantry, simple righteousness triumphant over villainous and evil might, and spectacular action. There were at least six silent era attempts at the story. The Reginald de Koven-Harry B. Smith light opera version of Robin Hood was originally presented in 1890. And Douglas Fairbanks starred as the infamous outlaw hero and Wallace Beery as Richard the Lion-Hearted in an early silent version of the film directed by Allan Dwan - Robin Hood (1922), reportedly the most expensive film made up to that time (at $1.6 - 2 million). In addition to his daring stunt work (sliding down a drapery, engaging in archery and swordsmanship, and other acrobatic feats), Fairbanks wrote the screenplay (with pseudonym Elton Thomas) for the fast moving, epic silent film filled with medieval pageantry. The 1938 Warner Bros. film is expensively mounted (at $2 million, it was the studio's largest budgeted film), and beautifully photographed in glorious and brilliant, three-strip Technicolor (Warners' first) by cinematographers Sol Polito and Tony Gaudio, especially in the Sherwood Forest sequence [filmed in Bidwell Park in Chico, California] and other scenes of costumed pageantry. [During preliminary plans for the film, it was originally expected that James Cagney would star as the legendary outlaw and contract player Guy Kibbee would play Friar Tuck.] The spectacle includes superb casting of memorable characters, a light-hearted, but spirited story, exciting dueling and action scenes requiring extensive stunt work, and the ideal love team of de Havilland and gallant Flynn with their witty and tender romantic scenes together. [It was their third of eight films together - the first two were Captain Blood (1935) and The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) - and this was the first of their pairings in color.] Flynn did most of his own dueling and other action stunts except for the expert archery shooting, and was coached by fencing master Fred Cavens. Oscar-winning Erich Wolfgang Korngold (who won his second award) created the richly orchestrated, lush score that effectively provided the musical backdrop for the action and the rich settings, and the literate screenplay was co-written by contract writer Norman Reilly Raine (who won the Academy Award in 1938 for the prestigious The Life of Emile Zola (1937)) and Seton I. Miller (who was co-author of The Sea Hawk (1940), another Flynn swashbuckler). The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Interior Direction (Carl J. Weyl), Best Original Score (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), Best Film Editing (Ralph Dawson), and Best Picture, and lost only its Best Picture recognition to Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You (1938). Disney produced two Robin Hood versions: The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men (1952) (Disney's second made-in-Britain production) and the animated Robin Hood (1973). And Hammer Studios produced three Robin Hood movies in the 1950s and 1960s: Men of Sherwood Forest (1957), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), and A Challenge for Robin Hood (1968). The 1938 film had a sequel of sorts, Robin and Marian (1976), with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as middle-aged lovers. And Kevin Costner starred as the title character in Kevin Reynolds' Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). See less »

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1938, movies, robin hood, the adventures of robin hood

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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

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