Amazon.com video review:
That's Errol Flynn looking dashing in the trees of Sherwood
Forest in this 1938 swashbuckler about the hero who steals from the
rich and gives to the poor. As far as the movies are concerned, Flynn
is the definitive Robin Hood, and this Warner Bros. film directed by
Michael Curtiz
(Casablanca) and
William Keighley (Each
Dawn I Die) is a pulse-quickener with a perfect actor for
every role: Olivia de Havilland as a beautiful Maid Marian, Claude
Rains as an evil prince, Basil Rathbone as a snotty Guy of
Gisbourne. A colorful, rich film that brings all the familiar, key
scenes to life. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com Essentials:
Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously
swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited
Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn
and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone
as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the
production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome,
glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring,
Oscar-winning score by
Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving
Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country
into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood
and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a cliché
coined by the film, "steal from the rich and give to the poor." Stocky
Alan Hale Sr. plays Robin's loyal friend Little John (a part he played in
Douglas Fairbanks's silent version), Eugene Palette the portly Friar Tuck,
and Melville Cooper the bumbling Sheriff of Nottingham. Flynn's confidence
and cocky charm makes for a perfect Robin Hood, and his easygoing manner is a
marvelous counterpoint to Rathbone's regal bearing and courtly diction. The
film climaxes in their rousing battle-to-the-finish sword fight, a
magnificently choreographed scene highlighted by Curtiz's inventive use of
shadows cast upon the castle walls. --Sean Axmaker
