The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood

“The Adventures of Robin Hood” was made with sublime innocence and breathtaking artistry, at a time when its simple values rang true. In these cynical days when swashbucklers cannot be presented without an ironic subtext, this great 1938 film exists in an eternal summer of bravery and romance. We require no Freudian subtext, no revisionist analysis; it is enough that Robin wants to rob the rich, pay the poor and defend the Saxons not against all Normans, only the bad ones: “It’s injustice I hate, not the Normans.”

The movie involved a couple of firsts: The first Warner Bros. film shot in the three-strip Technicolor process, and the first of 12 times Flynn would be directed by Michael Curtiz. It was the fifth of eight films that Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland would make together.

It is a triumph of the studio system. The producer, Hal B. Wallis, was the most creative executive on the Warner Bros. lot, and when the studio’s biggest star, James Cagney, walked off angry and left “Robin Hood” without a star, Wallis had the clout and daring to cast Flynn in the role Flynn, a young man from Tasmania with only one Hollywood hit, “Captain Blood.”

It was Wallis who decided to use the new and expensive Technicolor process, Wallis who fired an early writer who wanted to dispense with Maid Marian, Wallis who was powerful enough to replace Keighley with Curtiz because Keighley fell ill or because Wallis wanted more action scenes.

Keighley did most of his work on outdoor scenes. But then he fell ill (according to one story), or (according to another) Wallis wanted Curtiz to pump up some action scenes.

The result is a film that justifies Glorious Technicolor as its trademark. “They just don’t make movies with this level of tonal saturation any more,” writes the British critic Damien Cannon. Look at the opulent tapestries of the castle interiors, and Milo Anderson’s reds and golds and grays and greens in her costumes, which match the lush greens of Sherwood Forest (actually the studio ranch at Chico, Calif). The cinematographers, Sol Polito and Tony Gaudio, were using the original three strip Technicolor process, which involved cumbersome cameras and a lot of extra lighting, but produced a richness of color that modern color films cannot rival.

For all its technical splendor, however, “Robin Hood” would not be a masterpiece without its casting not just Flynn and de Havilland, who are indispensable (Flynn had no range as an actor except when he co-starred opposite her), but also such dependable Warners’ supporting stars as Claude Rains as Prince John; Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne; Patric Knowles as Will Scarlett; Eugene Pallette as Friar Tuck; Alan Hale as Little John, and so on. In modern films where superstars dominate every scene (as they did in Kevin Costner’s 1991 version), there is only one star present at a time. But Hollywood films from the golden era have depth in writing and casting: They can resonate with more than one tone.

To see him at the start of his career is thrilling, because in his later years Errol Flynn turned into a caricature of himself and an unpleasant man. When he was still improbably handsome which wasn’t really the point he became a star because of his lightness, because he embodied Robin Hood with such cheer. Asked what he looked for in an actor, George C. Scott replied “joy of performance,” and Flynn has that joy in careless abundance: watch him swagger into John’s banquet hall and throw a deer down before the prince, knowing full well that poaching a deer is punishable by death; surrounded by enemies, he boldly accuses John of treason against Richard the Lionhearted and then fights his way out of the castle again.

Another actor might have wanted to project uncertainty or resolve or danger; Flynn gives us a Robin Hood so impossibly alive that the whole adventure is just one big lark. Yes, his eyes flick over to notice that the exit is being blocked and guards are unsheathing their swords, but he looks not with fear but with anticipation.

This is the scene where Maid Marian first sees Robin, and we first see her: through her eyes. That Olivia de Havilland was beautiful goes without saying, but as I watched my new DVD of “The Adventures of Robin Hood” I found myself sometimes pausing the film just to look at de Havilland in close-up here (her cheeks rosy in Technicolor) or there (her features fine and resolute). Her feelings about Sir Robin change from one scene to another; it’s not like she suddenly decides to fall out of love with Gisbourne and in love with somebody else. It gradually dawns on her who this man is whom she loves and what she must do.

Their love scenes are so simple-mindedly direct that they make modern love scenes in action movies seem too realistic; they draw too much on psychology and not enough on romance and fable. It’s touching, and it’s affecting it moves me deeply, anyway to see the lovers in middle age in “Robin and Marian” (1976), with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn carrying across the poignancy of their long separation, but what would touch us more deeply is Flynn’s Robin Hood and de Havilland’s Maid Marian as the instruments of fate; they don’t come together because of love or desire alone there are other reasons why they must be together. Their union is meant to suggest something about chivalric love in the Middle Ages, when marriage was a form of God’s will.

The swashbuckling in the movie is thrilling precisely because most of it is real. The weakness of modern special-effects movies is that too much of the action is obviously impossible, and some of the computer animation violates gravity and physics. It may be my failing as an audience member or my flaw as a critic, but I’m bored by things that cannot happen; it amuses me to watch things that could happen.

Stunt men were used in some shots in The Adventures of Robin Hood. But many daring scenes obviously use the real Flynn, who, like Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in the 1922 “Robin Hood,” wanted it known he took his chances. Some stunts are the same in both pictures, as when Robin cuts the rope holding a gate and then rides the rope up as the gate comes down. Others include carefree leaps from ankle-breaking heights, and of course the sword fights.

The new Warner’s DVD assembles the historians Rudy Behlmer, Paula Sigman, Leonard Maltin, Bob Thomas and Robert Osborne, for a documentary about the making of the film, and from them I learn that it was fencing master Fred Cavens who was primarily responsible for the modern movie swordfight; he believed “it should look like a fight, not like a fencing match,” and Flynn, coached by Cavens, hurls himself into the sword scenes with a robust glee.

Watching him in those swordfights, I tried to imagine James Cagney whom Warners originally considered for this role as Robin Hood. “It’s an interesting concept to think of James Cagney in his little green outfit,” muses Robert Osborne.

“This little short fellow running around Sherwood Forest.” Cagney was a fearless physical actor; as a dancer he would have had the footwork for the fencing; but many scenes show bodies full-figure (think of Rathbone), which would have emphasized their difference in height between him and Rathbone (but not Rains); cast changes might have been necessary. As Cagney watched this film even he must have conceded that Flynn was perfect for the role.

There are moments in “Robin Hood” that are as playful as a child’s game; one is when Robin and his men rise to Prince John’s archery tournament bait: Are we to believe the most wanted men in the kingdom could disguise themselves simply by pulling their hats low over their faces? And there are moments a little too obvious, as when Robin takes Marion to a part of Sherwood Forest occupied by some of the Saxons he has helped, and they skulk about like an engraving of tired and huddled masses, rousing themselves to express gratitude to him. We knew that Robin Hood took from the rich to give to the poor; we did not know he ran his own refugee camp.

There are also moments of bravura, as when an arrow extinguishes a candle on its way to killing a Norman. And an arrow splits another in midshaft during the archery tourney. And the great sword fight between Robin and Sir Guy that cuts between them and their shadows. And Technicolor is never more glorious than in those big outdoor scenes of pageantry, such as the assembling of the court for the tournament.

The intimate scenes are unflinchingly direct, almost audacious in their straightforwardness. Robin and Marian look into each other’s eyes and say they love each other, without irony, without twists of language or metaphors from poets in another century.

Sometimes the movie is simple when it needs to be simple. After all, it’s the relationship between those two characters that’s at the center of everything here. The perfect hero does good deeds, fights noble battles, has fun on his adventures and wins the girl. “The Adventures of Robin Hood” is a textbook example of how to do that right.

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