This film is a classic of world cinema, the all-time romantic adventure film, with a serious backbone, a great love story but also wonderful action scenes and a great sense of fun to go with a perfect cast, unmatched production values and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's greatest musical score.
Errol Flynn is the perfect Robin Hood, romping through the film with a foolhardy confidence which he and his allies are able to back up. He can make an impassioned speech or play a delicate love scene with equal skill. He was doubled a lot more than it seemed in the action sequences but he was so handsome and athletic-looking it appeared he was not doubled at all. You could believe he could do anything. He and Basil Rathbone did much of the justly famous swordfight at the end. It's the one such scene in the film where the combatants really seem to want to harm each other, (in the others they just clang their swords).
Olivia De Havilland is a winsome Lady Marian, wearing some of the most spectacular costumes in cinema history. Rathbone is the perfect villain - articulate but arrogant and ruthless. (He was also an expert swordsman who cold run Flynn through at any time - but it would have ruined the picture.) Claude Rains is the effete, scheming Prince John. (How long would it have taken for one to get rid of the other had they won?) Melville Cooper is a comically corrupt but cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham, (usually the villain in these things). Alan Hale Jr. is such a perfect Little John that he played it three times - opposite Douglas Fairbanks in 1922, Flynn in 1938 and, of all people, John Derek, in 1950, (Hale's last film, done shortly before his death in January of that year). I think I spotted his son, Alan, Jr., (the Skipper on Gilligan's Island), who would have been a big and robust 16, playing one the archers in the tournament. He's dressed in a tattered brown outfit, standing just behind Flynn as Robin wins the tournament. Herbert Mundin is the unprepossessing but feisty Much the Miller's son. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Ona O'Connor is the sharp-tongued lady in waiting to Maid Marian and Much's eventual mate. Ian Hunter provides the necessary presence for Richard the lion-hearted. Montagu Love, the excellent henry VIII in the previous year's 'The Prince and the Pauper', is the dour Bishop of the Black Canons. Eugene Pallette, an unlikely swordsman, plays friar Tuck, also an unlikely swordsman. Poor Patrick Knowles, as Will Scarlett, is given little to do but parade around in a suit of that color that hardly would enable him to hide in the forest.
Like most of Flynn's best films, this one kind of winks at history. Richard was no paragon of virtue. John may not have been as bad as depicted. The Normans and the Saxons had assimilated by 1191. Robin Hood is an amalgamation of many tales of outlaws in various ballads over the centuries. Attempts have been made to identify a real source for him and other fictional character like Maid Marian, Guy of Gisborne, Wil Scarlett and others but these attempts inevitably fail. Friar Tuck seems to have bene a combination of two different Friars and there have been sheriffs of Nottingham for over 1,000 years but we don't know which one appears in this story. It doesn't really matter: it's what these characters represent to us that matters: heroism, love, comedy, freedom, cruelty, corruption, deprivation - all the different aspects of the human condition.
Korngold initially didn't want to do the score for this, thinking that an action film wouldn't have the emotional content he wanted to display in his music. He was going to go home to Austria but the Anschluss kept him in Hollywood so he composed a score full of emotion that adds so much to this film. Two other experts also contributed mightily: Harold Hill, regarded as the best archer of all time, who unleashed every arrow you see without harming anyone and fencing master Fred Cavens, who choreographed all the swordfights, including the famous one at the film's end.
In the commentary on the 65th anniversary DVD, Rudy Behlmer tells us that 'the Adventures of Robin Hood' was the fifth most often presented film on television, behind #1 'Casablanca', then 'King Kong', 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'The Maltese Falcon'. That's pretty good company.
Errol Flynn is the perfect Robin Hood, romping through the film with a foolhardy confidence which he and his allies are able to back up. He can make an impassioned speech or play a delicate love scene with equal skill. He was doubled a lot more than it seemed in the action sequences but he was so handsome and athletic-looking it appeared he was not doubled at all. You could believe he could do anything. He and Basil Rathbone did much of the justly famous swordfight at the end. It's the one such scene in the film where the combatants really seem to want to harm each other, (in the others they just clang their swords).
Olivia De Havilland is a winsome Lady Marian, wearing some of the most spectacular costumes in cinema history. Rathbone is the perfect villain - articulate but arrogant and ruthless. (He was also an expert swordsman who cold run Flynn through at any time - but it would have ruined the picture.) Claude Rains is the effete, scheming Prince John. (How long would it have taken for one to get rid of the other had they won?) Melville Cooper is a comically corrupt but cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham, (usually the villain in these things). Alan Hale Jr. is such a perfect Little John that he played it three times - opposite Douglas Fairbanks in 1922, Flynn in 1938 and, of all people, John Derek, in 1950, (Hale's last film, done shortly before his death in January of that year). I think I spotted his son, Alan, Jr., (the Skipper on Gilligan's Island), who would have been a big and robust 16, playing one the archers in the tournament. He's dressed in a tattered brown outfit, standing just behind Flynn as Robin wins the tournament. Herbert Mundin is the unprepossessing but feisty Much the Miller's son. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Ona O'Connor is the sharp-tongued lady in waiting to Maid Marian and Much's eventual mate. Ian Hunter provides the necessary presence for Richard the lion-hearted. Montagu Love, the excellent henry VIII in the previous year's 'The Prince and the Pauper', is the dour Bishop of the Black Canons. Eugene Pallette, an unlikely swordsman, plays friar Tuck, also an unlikely swordsman. Poor Patrick Knowles, as Will Scarlett, is given little to do but parade around in a suit of that color that hardly would enable him to hide in the forest.
Like most of Flynn's best films, this one kind of winks at history. Richard was no paragon of virtue. John may not have been as bad as depicted. The Normans and the Saxons had assimilated by 1191. Robin Hood is an amalgamation of many tales of outlaws in various ballads over the centuries. Attempts have been made to identify a real source for him and other fictional character like Maid Marian, Guy of Gisborne, Wil Scarlett and others but these attempts inevitably fail. Friar Tuck seems to have bene a combination of two different Friars and there have been sheriffs of Nottingham for over 1,000 years but we don't know which one appears in this story. It doesn't really matter: it's what these characters represent to us that matters: heroism, love, comedy, freedom, cruelty, corruption, deprivation - all the different aspects of the human condition.
Korngold initially didn't want to do the score for this, thinking that an action film wouldn't have the emotional content he wanted to display in his music. He was going to go home to Austria but the Anschluss kept him in Hollywood so he composed a score full of emotion that adds so much to this film. Two other experts also contributed mightily: Harold Hill, regarded as the best archer of all time, who unleashed every arrow you see without harming anyone and fencing master Fred Cavens, who choreographed all the swordfights, including the famous one at the film's end.
In the commentary on the 65th anniversary DVD, Rudy Behlmer tells us that 'the Adventures of Robin Hood' was the fifth most often presented film on television, behind #1 'Casablanca', then 'King Kong', 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'The Maltese Falcon'. That's pretty good company.