Full disclosure for those at home: this is one of my favorite films. It’s in the top ten easily, and depending on my mood it sometimes encroaches into the top five. I love it so much that I can’t contain my thoughts about it - when I watch it with anyone else, it takes hours, because I’m always pausing the actual movie to explain what’s so great or interesting about what just happened. I do this a lot with my favorite movies.
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a film made in the midst of a depression and the rise of global fascism. England was not yet at war with Hitler’s Germany, but war was around the corner. The director, Michael Curtiz, was a Hungarian Jewish man who left Europe in the 20s. In 1938, the year this film was released, Curtiz begged Jack Warner’s help in securing visas for his family members still in Europe. Curtiz’s mother made it to the United States; his sister and her family were not so lucky and were later sent to Auschwitz. Her husband and two of her children were killed there.
The film knows this. No explicit parallels are drawn, and no particularly radical points are made. Yet The Adventures of Robin Hood cannot be divorced from the context of the time in which it was made. The Saxons are positioned as an occupied and oppressed people: hungry, overworked and underpaid, and criminalized. The line from a Norman soldier “pay, pay, that’s all you Saxons think about” could be a coincidence, but one can’t help but be reminded of anti-semitism. The ordinary people in this film are in the midst of a devastating crisis, one they can only hope is temporary.
Yet for all that, The Adventures of Robin Hood is joyful, defiantly joyful in the face of fear and oppression. Before finally defeating his adversaries, Robin makes them a joke. He carries the illegally hunted deer into Prince John’s feast on his shoulders, fighting off guards with the antlers. He captures the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne, dresses them in rags, and sends them home. He arrives at an archery competition he knows full well is a trap for him specifically, in a purple costume with his hat at a jaunty angle. Robin Hood as played (wonderfully) by Errol Flynn has no idea how to blend in.
Flynn is spectacular in the title role: funny, charismatic, grave when called for, and so, so joyful. He and the Merry Men are constantly ribbing each other; Robin’s first encounter with Little John sees him beaten in a fight and thrown into a creek. Robin laughs, tells John “I love a man who can best me!” and apparently makes a friend for life. When he plays practical jokes on Friar Tuck, he steps on the reveal immediately because he can’t help sharing the joke with Tuck. Flynn and Olivia de Havilland practically glow with love when they share the screen. Even when Marian tells Robin that she can’t be with him, her joy at their relationship is infectious: never has a balcony goodbye between lovers been happier.
There is a shot late in the film that has always struck me, and is especially poignant given the political context of 1938. After Robin has won his battle with Guy of Gisborne (one of the, if not the, greatest sword fights ever put on film) and rescued Marian, there is a cut to a pile of swords on the floor of the throne room. Both sides add to the pile, and it’s impossible to tell which weapon belonged to which side. The Adventures of Robin Hood is a story about conflict with a great enemy, about the necessity of coming together against that enemy, but it ends with the hope of peace.
Recommend?
Without reservations. Like I said, it’s one of my favorites, and it succeeds on every level. Flynn is the highlight of course, but Claude Rains is especially good as Prince John. He’s a fun villian who never quite becomes campy, and he can turn menacing on a dime. Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy is wonderful as well, and a perfect adversary for Robin. Great character actors like Eugene Pallette and Melville Cooper are a ton of fun. Olivia de Havilland brings an interesting dignity and intelligence to what could have been a thankless part, and she and Flynn have perfect chemistry.
Michael Curtiz, for reasons passing understanding, has never been given his due as one of the great auteurs of old Hollywood, but his direction is excellent (as it always was). He found wonderful performances in the whole cast, and the action scenes especially are perfectly choreographed and shot. You can definitely see the influence of the German expressionist films he loved. I can’t think of many other action films, even from that period, where the action is so clean and clear: the eye is always guided exactly to where it needs to be. The famous archery contest could be silent and the story would still be conveyed. It’s perfect.
Clips
I love old trailers! And this is one of my favorite scenes in any film, ever.