World Film and Television Progress (1938)

HE VIEW OF REVIEWS The Adventures of Blohin Hood (Michael Curtiz and William Keighley — Warner Brothers.) Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter, Olivia de Havilland. There are certain essentials that must be found in any story of Robin Hood if the teller expects to be heard. The thickets must be bright with spring, the forest must be large and indeed illimitable, the deer must run, there must be bows and arrows, and Robin himself must be conducting a one-man revolution against iniquitous sheriffs, bishops and prince-regents. The last of these features is doubtless the quintessential one. The setting can vary with the episodes, but Robin cannot cease from the fight he wages — he and his merry band — against gold braid and money bags. Warner Brothers have put everything into The Adventures of Robin Hood that was necessary, and a few more things for good luck. The forest of the film is perhaps a shade too pretty, what with technicolor and all ; the people, both of low and of high degree, look as clean as a Newport picnic crowd ; and the costumes of the nobles, whether in a great hall or among the mighty trunks of oaks and beeches, have an unvarying splendour at which the eye loses strength at last to gaze. There will, of course, be a difference of opinion on this point; nor am I denying that The Adventures of Robin Hood is one of the prettiest things I have ever watched. To my taste, however, it has been overpolished, and it is too clean. Hollywood can learn something from Europe about the convincingness of a little disarray, a little honest disorder. I remember, for example, a Chechoslovakian film of more than a year ago which handled the Robin Hood theme with no prettiness at all. Janosik pushed on, to be sure, to a tragic conclusion ; the hero, captured and condemned to die by impalement, leapt against the hook as he finished a wild song of freedom. But that is irrelevant to my point, which is that the background everywhere was trying to be veritable, and succeeding because nothing real had been removed from the camera's vision. Warner Brothers have swept their forest till it is as neat as a nut; the roadways look like bridle-paths; and many of the merry men bring the air of the costume chamber with them to the picked trees they will climb. Janosik conducted its one-man revolution also in a more plausible spirit. The audience never forgot that the hero was in great and indeed terrible danger. If The Adventures of Robin Hood arouses no anxiety in its spectators, the excuse might be that it is comedy whereas Janosik was tragedy. But Errol Flynn is perhaps too obviously safe at all times — even in a great hall full of nobles he has only to hack his way out or to push convenient 172 Edited by H. E. BLYTH "(hie of the prettiest things tables in front of giants in red robes coming to crush him. At the gallows, in the greenwood, or fencing for his life with Sir Guy of Gisborne (Basil Rathbone), he has luck too visibly with him, he too plainly cannot lose. This means that the essential theme tends to disappear among a series of gay episodes — not quite as gay, either, as they would have been had Douglas Fairbanks returned to clown the fable. For Errol Flynn is not trying to be Douglas Fairbanks; he is trying to be romantic; and 1 think he would have been more so had he been able to make us catch our breath two or three times. But the film is better than I have said. It is really charming; Claude Rains is an accomplished Prince John ; and the recognition of King Richard (Ian Hunter) by Robin Hood is a great moment. Robin Hood has a whole summer before it, and I do not doubt that it will beautify the green season. — Mark Van Doren, The Nation Odd what makes a picture. The marquee glares with the names of Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, Basil Rathbone and nowhere will you find a two inch credit for the colour. This film would be dull, fiat, and I'm sure unprofitable but for the work of one Carl Jules Weyle — if I've got the right man. He's listed as art director. For it is only the brilliant, amazingly versatile use of colour that puts suspense and excitement into Robin Hood. One is led from scene to scene wondering what new splash of tint and texture will be revealed, instead of wondering whether Robin will be captured. Not since that first great splurge, Becky Sharpe, has Technicolor been used to such effect. And this has twenty memorable colour compositions, for every one in Becky Sharp. — Meyer Levin, Esquire A Slight Case of Murder (Lloyd Bacon— First National) Edward G. Robinson, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly. Accepting the hypothesis of the cheapness and unimportance of human life among racketeers, it is right and proper that nothing but fun is extracted from the corpses of four poker-playing bandits; but only with such a background is that possible. First, how they are shot, and next, how the bodies are disposed of, form the basis of this really amusing fantasy, where the stage attains a degree of acceptable unreality beyond any of the Restoration plays of which Lamb wrote. The whole company throws itself into the spirit of this deplorable embroilment, from the four men so slightly murdered, and their murderer, to that paragon of dignity and virtue Mr. Whitewood. But best of all is Robinson, as Marco the beer baron. — E. V. L., Punch The evolution of the thriller and gangsterdrama is surely one of the most curious manifestations of public taste in entertainment. Time was when the murder, without which no thriller is complete, raised a shudder, and even wholesale killings seemed grim. We have altered all that. Corpses nowadays are comic, and dying men a joke. I find it difficult to control an old-fashioned squeamishness \\ hen it comes to carting dead men about like sacks ot potatoes, and laughing at death. Yet A Slight Case of Murder, based on a play by Damon Runyon and Howard Lindsay, is,