Saw The Adventures of Robin Hood, a technicolor spectacular starring Errol Flynn, the Tom Cruise of his time. The film is not particularly stirring, but it is very pleasantly shot. Technicolor was new at the time and although much of the film is shot in the woods, they had not gotten bored with woods as they actually are at that time. So, despite much effort to make the woods of California look authentically like the woods of England, it mostly winds up looking like someone's backyard. It's a strange element of naturalism in an otherwise extremely stagey and mannered film.Indeed, the laid-back nature of Robin Hood coupled with the naturalistic nature scenes made me think of films of the 70s, with their preoccupation with the individual vs society.
The film cannot be mistaken for a film from the 70s however. There's a lot of bursting out in hearty laughs and quaint discussions of love for that. The characters all do that stage thing where they seem to be shouting at each other all of the time. It's a little silly, but that's the 30s for you. Film was still relatively young.
Anyway, the film is very quaint, very sweet. It's got a lot of swashbuckling and action scenes, but its heart is in the scenes where Robin laughingly parlays his wit with Prince John or with the Sheriff of Nottingham, tricking them and answering their verbal traps with cunning repartee. That's the bit I liked best anyway. The film is a romp of Robin outwitting the unjust state, and who can dislike that?
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