The Bandit of Sherwood Forest


Director: Henry Levin
Year: 1946
Rating: 6.0
My third Robin Hood tale in as many days and coincidentally they played out chronologically. In The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) we get a version of the origin story; in The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954) it depicts only the period when Richard returns to England and in this one it jumps many years into the future and Robin Hood is a middle aged man. I suppose I should watch Robin and Marian next but the thought just makes me sad for some reason. This was produced by Columbia who borrowed Cornel Wilde from Fox for the role. Wilde had just had an enormous hit playing Chopin in A Song to Remember. Going from Chopin to Robin Hood was quite a change - but Fox hoped that Wilde might replace Errol Flynn as the next swashbuckling hero since Flynn was getting older and more difficult to deal with at Warner Brothers (and in fact his series of classic films was over). Flynn is of course still the best Robin Hood of them all. Wilde never reached the status of Flynn - but then who did - but he had his share of adventure films. My favorite is one he directed, Naked Prey.



One thread that runs through all of these is that Robin Hood wasn't a bandit per se - but rather a freedom fighter who fought against tyranny for liberty and in this one for democracy. King John has died and left behind a nine year old son to rule and the Regent (the always dastardly Henry Daniell) plans to kill the boy, declare himself King and do away with the Magna Carta. In reality, King John did in fact leave behind a young son with a Protector but that Protector kept the boy safe, defeated the rebels and reinstated the Magna Carta. The boy would become Henry III who was to rule from 1216 to 1272.



But in this film version - it is up to Robin Hood, now an Earl, to save the day. He gathers his old cronies - Little John, Friar Monk, Will Scarlett and the minstrel Allan-A-Dale out of the old folks home. No Marian but Robin has a son Robert (Wilde) who takes over the action parts. A fair amount of action, some good swordplay in a duel near the end and of course romance as Robert falls for a fair maiden (Anita Louise). It is interesting to see how some older films have moments that make you cringe - when Robert meets this fair maiden who he mistakes for a serving girl, he grabs her and kisses her and when she resists sort of pushes her back till something interrupts. Twenty years ago I might have thought that was romantic and passionate - now all I could think was what a creep he was. And that impression stuck with me through the film. It is in beautiful Technicolor with apple cheeks on full display but the setting they use for Sherwood Forest is scraggly brush and sparse trees in California and that really detracts from the visuals - Central Park has more wooded areas. Look for Edgar Buchanan as Friar Tuck, a very odd choice.