Robin Hood

                
Director: Allan Dwan
Year: 1922
Rating: 6.0
After the box office success of The Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers, Douglas Fairbanks turned to another iconic fictional adventure hero, Robin Hood. Initially, when the idea was brought to his attention he was not interested because he thought he would look foolish running through the forest in tights. And in truth at times he does. What passed for youthful high spirits then as he merrily jumps and skips about and pumps his fist seems more than a little fanciful now. But he was persuaded by director Allan Dwan that it would give him the opportunity to use his archery and athletic skills. Dwan is a fascinating figure in the directing ranks of Hollywood lore. He was 26 years old when he began directing shorts in 1911. He was to work steadily over the next fifty years amassing over 400 directorial credits - and yet how many people could name one Allan Dwan film? Well, now you can! He was a director who was as far from being an auteur as you can find. He was hired or assigned to make a film and he did it well with a large degree of competency and on budget. He was a studio creature and over his career he worked or knew everyone.



He was also a favorite of Douglas Fairbanks and had directed him in a number of his pre-adventure films - comedies and a Western. He directed ten films with Fairbanks though Fairbanks always had a lot of input into his own films. He had directed Fairbanks in A Modern Musketeer in 1917 in which in a dream sequence Fairbanks is D'Artagnan and in this section Fairbanks performs a lot of what was going to become his derring-do trademark. Dwan showed him how he could and look graceful. Which Fairbanks had in spades. All of his leaps and movements always look easy for him as he jumps from building to building or slides down a giant drape. The sets were built specifically for what Fairbanks was capable of. These two had had a rupture in their friendship and working relationship about four years previously when Dwan left the set of Arizona but they were working together again.



This was the first feature length film about Robin Hood though there had been a few shorts going back to 1908. There was no real fictional rendering of Robin Hood - just a mythology that had grown over centuries through ballads and poems - so it allowed them to come up with their own story - though they bring the whole gang aboard. Lady Maid Marion, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, Allan-a-Dale, Prince John, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Richard the Lionhearted. Dwan wanted it big and spectacular and built an enormous castle with a huge interior room that was 450 feet long and walls that were 70 feet high and numerous long stairways. When Fairbanks saw it he was concerned that it would dwarf him but he just turned it into his playground. There were also thousands of extras. As Fairbanks was financing most of it he was fairly concerned about the cost. It became a huge hit.






It runs 143 minutes (though my version only ran 132 minutes). The story is similar to what we have come to be familiar with. Richard and his knights are ready to go off to the Crusades and the day before they are to leave they have a jousting tournament in which The Earl of Huntingdon defeats Guy of Gisbourne earning his enmity and winning the hand of Lady Marion. Though before that he is swarmed by multitudes of women showing that groupies go way back. Prince John (Sam De Grasse) is left behind to look over the country - but gives Gisbourne orders to kill both the King and Huntingdon. Once they are gone Prince John begins to bleed the country and letch after Maid Marion. In France Huntingdon receives a message from Marion telling what is going on and so he asks the King for permission to go back but not the reason why as he doesn't want to deter him from the Crusades. The King refuses and locks him up but he escapes. Once back in England he joins and then leads the rebels in Sherwood Forest and takes on the identity of Robin Hood.






It takes a long while for him to become Robin Hood - about 75 minutes into the film - and that is the main failing of the film for me. The first half is less than exciting - dull actually - and it only takes off when he becomes The Prince of Thieves. There are two very good set pieces that allowed Fairbanks to show his stuff. Once he sneaks into the castle and leads the soldiers on a lovely chase up and down and around the castle - the famous sliding down the drape being one of the stunts (there was a giant slide behind the drape). Then in the finale to the film he has to rescue Lady Marion and fight off hordes of men. For my taste they could have cut 30-minutes from the first section - especially his romancing of Marion that now strikes one as terribly corny. Fairbanks had started off in theater and it took some convincing to go into film - he was known on stage for what they called the Fairbank's Smile and his overtly dramatic motions. He brought that to film and there are times you wish he could learn a little restraint.






A few names that went on to good careers - Richard is played by Wallace Beery and Little John by Alan Hale. The same Alan Hale who would go on to work with the next Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, in so many of his films and in fact played Little John in the classic 1938 version of Robin Hood. The leading lady is kind of bleh - a shapeless dumpling - Enid Bennett who was married to Fred Niblo who had directed Fairbanks in Zorro and the Three Musketeers. Robin Hood films have been made many times since but the 1938 version is still by far the best.