Directors: Michael Curtiz and William Keighley
Genre(s): Action, Adventure, Romance
Runtime: 102 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood was the first major film released by Warner Bros. to use the new three-strip Technicolor process to generate realistic colors on the big screen. It was a wise choice for that distinction. Set in medieval England, renegade Saxon lord Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) launches an insurrection against the vile Prince John (Claude Rains), who has taken over the throne of the country while the true king, Richard (Ian Hunter, not the one of Mott the Hoople fame), is off fighting in the Crusades. This is one of the best action-adventure flicks of the 1930s.
The movie benefits from an abundance of skillfully-made and very rousing action sequences (Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood even beats up a couple of goons with a dead deer at one point). This must’ve been one of the most action-packed motion pictures yet made back in 1938. Amplifying the thrills is Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s wonderful musical score. It’s a remarkably merry actioner, with characters constantly bursting out laughing at the slightest comic relief.
If there’s one fault to be had with The Adventures of Robin Hood, it’s that the film seems to endorse the foreign policy isolationism that was all the rage in the United States at the time of its release. Robin Hood chides King Richard at one point for his foreign adventurism, a sentiment that would look mighty dated one year later when World War II broke out (this is not to say that the medieval Crusades were justified, of course). Robin Hood’s traditional steal-from-the-rich-to-give-to-the-poor narrative also seems a bit muddled by the fact that he’s largely fighting for the sake of restoring a monarch to his throne here.
This is a lively and, dare I say it?, colorful quasi-historical action-adventure feature with a dash of romance (between Robin Hood and Maid Marian [Olivia de Havilland], of course). The characters are well-defined and Errol Flynn is perfectly cast as the titular hero. The action scenes and the musical score also hit the bull’s-eye, so watch it if you haven’t seen it already.
My rating is 8 outta 10.
The Film Heretic Watches a Classic 