The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz, Keighley, 1938)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz, Keighley, 1938) - TSPDT #464

Robin shoots arrows, wears tights, defies the evil Prince John and has horrible table manners. And he has a fling with Maid Marian, who likes to dress up in some sort of medieval burkas.

The colors are stunning. Never have I seen a meadow so green (they painted it), costumes so lush, cheeks so glowingly red, and teeth so refreshingly unbleached. It's quite amazing how this film is visually gripping just by this explosion of chroma. It would be nice to see a film like this again these days - although animation seems to have taken on the adventure of exploring color space.

The script seems quite disjoint - but when I was a kid, it impressed me for weeks. There seems to be a different mechanic at work underneath, which my gut feeling tells me has a bit to do with Vogler's heroes, but there's also something else. Maybe it's the way that Flynn gets represented as a hero who never loses faith in himself. The "all is lost" point where he is captured feels artificial, Flynn barely reacts to it on screen. I felt a certain mechanic lifeless quality of how the story progressed, but maybe it was just disappointed childhood memories.

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