Black Gate

Captain From Castile 

In the Thirties, young Tyrone Power made an impression as a leading man in various cinematic genres, so Twentieth Century Fox gave him a contract. Power really wanted to play serious dramatic roles, but after his runaway success with The Mark of Zorro (1940) and The Black Swan (1942), the latter directed by Henry King, Fox decided Power was their Errol Flynn and slated him for more swashbucklers, which wasn’t what Power had in mind.

But then World War II got in the way, like it did for a lot of people; when Power returned from his tour as a decorated pilot for the Marines, he found that Fox hadn’t changed their plans for him, and he was cast in Captain from Castile, with Henry King once again directing. Power kept pushing for other roles, getting in a taut film noir and a couple of comedy parts, but Fox continued putting a sword into his hand for a couple more years before Power sheathed that sword for good. Fortunately, we got the classic Prince of Foxes before he did.

Captain from Castile

Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1947
Director: Henry King
Source: 20th Century Fox Classics DVD

This is a magnificent failure, a classic case of Hollywood buying a novel for its strengths and then lacking the guts to put those strengths on the screen. And it’s a damn shame, because it could have been great. Samuel Shellabarger’s best-selling 1945 novel tells the story of a naïve young Spanish nobleman who runs afoul of the Inquisition; to escape persecution and certain death, he joins Hernán Cortez’s expedition to Mexico, becoming one of the conquistador’s trusted officers.

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Last of the Vikings (1961)

The blockbuster success of 1958’s The Vikings spawned a number of would-be successors that tried to make up for lower budgets by amping up the action. The ever-lurid Italian cinema took the lead with two adventures directed or co-directed by Mario Bava, Last of the Vikings and Erik the Conqueror, but the UK was right behind with their own over-the-top Viking saga, The Long Ships. You can call these guilty pleasures if you like, but that doesn’t stop them from being thoroughly enjoyable. Form shield wall, Vikings, and prepare for attack!

Last of the Vikings

Rating: ***
Origin: Italy/France, 1961
Director: Giacomo Gentilomo
Source: Mill Creek DVD

This is a solid Viking adventure film, a cut above most Italian action movies of its day. It stars Cameron Mitchell and George Ardisson as the male Viking leads in parts similar to their roles later in the year in the even better Erik the Conqueror. The film opens with a sea battle, after which Harald (Mitchell) and his brother Guntar (Ardisson) return to Norway after ten years of sea roving, only to find that all the free Viking chieftains have been crushed under the heel of Bad King Sveno (Edmund Purdom, Sword of Freedom) — who, to add insult to injury, has adopted the effete ways of civilized Europe. Harald vows vengeance, because that’s what Vikings do, and begins gathering the surviving warriors under his banner.

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Silvana Mangano and Kirk Douglas in Ulysses (1954)

Ryan Harvey has written extensively here about the peplum movie or Italian sword-and-sandal craze of 1959-65, a phenomenon that had an immediate origin in three films: Ulysses, which showed that there was a postwar Italian market for adventure films from the era of myth; Hercules, which proved you could make such a movie popular on both sides of the Atlantic; and Hercules Unchained, which demonstrated there was a formula for repeated success. These were well-crafted movies that aimed much higher than most of their successors and provided solid, and occasionally even thoughtful entertainment. If you’re unfamiliar with them I’m pleased to introduce you, and if they’re old friends you can join me in appreciation.

Ulysses

Rating: ****
Origin: Italy, 1954
Director: Mario Camerini
Source: Lionsgate DVD

Kirk Douglas made his reputation in Hollywood in the late Forties as a leading man in a series of intense, dramatic roles. By 1954 he was ready for a change of pace: action hero! He signed on with Disney for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and with Dino De Laurentiis in Italy for the epic Ulysses, based, of course, on Homer’s The Odyssey. This was a big-budget production, with lavish sets, exteriors shot on Mediterranean islands, and a lovely full-scale Greek galley. Plus, of course, a cyclops.

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Le Capitan (1960)

As you might expect from the country that gave us Cyrano and d’Artagnan, the French film industry has always been enthusiastic about making swashbucklers. A lot of them have no available English-language versions, alas, but here are three of the best that do. I think you’ll agree they all have a certain je ne sais quoi.

The Captain (or Le Capitan)

Rating: ****
Origin: France/Italy, 1960
Director: André Hunebelle
Source: Pathé DVD

This French film may be the best swashbuckler you’ve never seen. It’s set in France a dozen years before the events of The Three Musketeers, when King Louis XIII was only 15 years old and still ruled by his mother, Marie de Médicis, and her lover, the Italian adventurer Concino Concini, whom Marie has elevated to the rank of prime minister. Concini’s hired thugs are killing nobles who oppose him and looting their estates, and the movie opens with a mêlée in which Concini’s assassins, led by their boss, Rinaldo, are raiding a count’s château. The count’s friend, the Chevalier de Capestang (Jean Marais), gallops up and leaps into the fray, turning the tide, but not before Rinaldo knifes the count in the back. As the thugs retreat Capestang is wounded by another thrown knife and is about to slain by the last assassin when the killer is shot down by a mysterious lady (Elsa Martinelli) in a male cavalier outfit.

The mystery woman nurses Capestang back to health but then disappears. Was she just a vision of delirium? Once healed, Capestang agrees to represent the grievances of the local nobles and travel to Paris to appeal to Concini — and maybe even the young king. Concini (Arnoldo Foà) tries to co-opt the capable Capestang, but he haughtily refuses, and Concini, in Italian, dubs him “Il Capitano” after the stock commedia dell’arte character of the strutting braggart. Capestang accepts the moniker as a badge of honor.

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The Mark of Zorro (1940)

November 27, 1920, a century ago plus a few weeks, saw the release of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s The Mark of Zorro, and the beginning of the swashbuckler film as we know it. There was a lot more Zorro to follow, some of it very good indeed, so this week we’re looking at the early post-silent career of the Masked Man in Black.

The Mark of Zorro

Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: USA, 1940
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Source: Fox Studio Classics DVD

Tyrone Power’s family had been on the stage for generations, and he considered himself a serious actor. He finally broke into the movies in the mid-1930s and became a popular leading man for 20th Century Fox in parts both serious and not-so-serious. Meanwhile Warner Bros. was making a pile from Errol Flynn’s swashbucklers; though Fox didn’t have Flynn, they did have Power, and Darryl F. Zanuck decided Power was going to be Fox’s sword-slinging hero. To launch him in that new role they chose to remake The Mark of Zorro, the film that had launched Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s swashbuckling career. It wasn’t the kind of part Power really wanted to play, but he dutifully agreed, and the result was a classic that typecast him, rightly or wrongly, for the rest of his career.

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The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)

During the American occupation of Japan after World War II, one of its many social restrictions was a prohibition on the making of violent movies, which meant no historical samurai adventures. When the occupation was lifted in 1952, the chambara, or swordplay action films, gradually returned, and by the late Fifties they made up a significant portion of the movies and TV shows made for Japanese domestic consumption. Based on a story by the novelist Kan Shimozawa, The Tale of Zatoichi was just one more minor chambara feature, but Shintaro Katsu’s portrayal of the blind swordsman was surprisingly popular and the Zatoichi films went on to become the longest running chambara series of all, running to 25 feature films and four seasons as a TV series. And yet its hero is no noble samurai, or even a masterless ronin, but a mere low-ranking member of the criminal yakuza. Nonetheless, he’s a character you’ll never forget. Elements of the Zatoichi films showed up later in the Lone Wolf & Cub series, which in turn helped inspire The Mandalorian, so these films are relevant even today.

The Tale of Zatoichi

Rating: *****
Origin: Japan, 1962
Director: Kenji Misumi
Source: Criterion DVD

In Japan in the late Fifties and early Sixties, mid-level studios like Daei Motion Pictures churned out samurai action films and TV shows much like Hollywood did Westerns in the same period. These were mostly disposable and forgettable, and most have been duly forgotten. You can be sure that nobody who worked on The Tale of Zatoichi thought they were making anything but one more quickie chambara feature, but somehow they created a story that transcended its genre limitations and spawned the longest-running samurai series in Japanese film.

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After the grim years of World War II, a large part of the moviegoing public was looking for lighter fare in their entertainment, and Hollywood returned to making swashbucklers, many of them in the happy hues of Technicolor. Pirates were back on the menu, but as America headed into the conformist Fifties, the pirates on its movie screens were more rascals than cutthroats, good-hearted rogues who would plunder some buried treasure and maybe hold a lady for ransom, but for whom keel-hauling and suchlike barbarisms were out of the question. Wholesome buccaneers as family entertainment! Absurd, of course, but fun if it was done with a wink at the viewer.

Anne of the Indies

Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1951
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Source: Amazon Streaming Video

We usually award the title Queen of the Swashbucklers to Maureen O’Hara, but Jean Peters makes a grab for her crown in this fine pirate melodrama. As an orphan girl, Anne (Peters) was raised aboard ship by Edward Teach — Blackbeard himself! — and now commands her own fighting ship, the Sheba Queen, under the name Captain Providence, and she’s a real hellion. Since her brother was hanged as a pirate by the English, she preys on English shipping and kills English sailors without mercy, making the captives walk the plank. But one captured sailor is the strikingly handsome Louis Jourdan playing a Frenchman named (what else?) François, who claims to be a privateer’s navigator who’d been captured by the Royal Navy. Captain Providence frees him, adds him to her crew, and takes him to Nassau to meet Blackbeard — which is where the real trouble starts.

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Television and TV broadcasting had many forebears, but the first regular national service was Great Britain’s BBC TV in 1936. It was suspended in 1939 during World War II so enemy aircraft couldn’t home in on its signals, but broadcasting resumed in 1946 and expanded rapidly thereafter. In 1955 the BBC was joined on the British airwaves by the Independent Television network, or ITV. Unlike the BBC, ITV was a commercial network, its programming supported by advertising and, it was hoped, by selling its content for rebroadcasting in the burgeoning American markets.

ITV broadcast a range of content, but what’s important to us is that there were entertaining swashbuckler series in the mix, starting from the very beginning in September 1955 with The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel. In Robin Hood, at least, ITV had a smash success, and its production company added two additional series in 1956, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and The Buccaneers. (There was also an independent Count of Monte Cristo series, but we’ll save that for another day.) All of these shows were syndicated regionally across the United States, and Robin Hood in particular is fondly remembered.

The Adventures of Robin Hood, Season One

Rating: ****
Origin: UK, 1955
Director: Ralph Smart, et al.
Source: Network DVD

This series, which premiered in 1955 in both the USA and UK, heralded a brief vogue for swashbuckling TV shows, most of them produced in Britain — but this is the one that really mattered, because it was smart and dependably entertaining, found a devoted audience, ran for four seasons in the Fifties and then for decades in syndication. Its success inspired its only significant rival in Disney’s Zorro. Though shot in the UK with a British cast and crew, its producers were Americans whose politics leaned left, and most of its scripters were American screenwriters such as Howard Koch and Waldo Salt who’d been blacklisted in Hollywood. They gave the stories an anti-authoritarian edge that accorded well with Robin Hood’s outlaw legend.

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Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai had done well for Toho Pictures so Kurosawa was encouraged to produce other samurai-era films, and during the late Fifties and early Sixties he alternated making historicals with crime films. Kurosawa was at the height of his creative powers, with a brilliant production team that was devoted to him, and a reliable revolving cast topped by his go-to lead, the versatile and charismatic Toshiro Mifune. These movies had a huge influence on American and European films of the Sixties and Seventies, an influence that persists today several creative generations later. These are deep films, richly nuanced and technically impressive — but best of all, they’re so much fun to watch.

The Hidden Fortress

Rating: *****
Origin: Japan, 1958
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Source: Amazon streaming video

The sound bite on The Hidden Fortress is that it’s the Kurosawa film that inspired Star Wars, but if you go into it expecting to see some kind of samurai cognate to the Skywalker saga, you’re going to be disappointed, and worse, you may overlook the very real pleasures this film has to offer. Yes, Hidden Fortress did inspire some aspects of George Lucas’s approach to Star Wars, but just put that aside and let this movie win you over on its own terms.

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