Month: February 2021

Robin and Marian (1976)

ROBIN AND MARIAN (1976) ****
Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian definitely made a strong first impression.

I placed it on my top 10 films list for 1976, based on just viewing it a single time on cable TV many years ago.

Granted, Robin and Marian crossed my mind several times in recent months, especially after Robin and Marian star Sean Connery died last Halloween and then after I watched both the Disney (1973’s Robin Hood) and the Mel Brooks (1993’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights) takes on the legendary old warhorse. Disney and Brooks both left me feeling often unimpressed and ultimately supremely disappointed, for very different reasons, and I started thinking instead about superior Robin Hood films The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin and Marian, both of which I first encountered during childhood or teenage years.

The Adventures of Robin Hood remains my favorite take on Robin Hood and I’ve watched it numerous times over the years. Of course, it helped that The Adventures of Robin Hood ranked among the select few titles Grandma Sisney had on VHS and I played it — along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Fun in Acapulco — so many times before Grandma took over her TV for a day of game shows and soap operas. There’s always been something so indelible about Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood that I judge all others portraying Robin Hood against Flynn’s standard, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone make incredibly satisfying villains, and Olivia de Havilland’s Maid Marian simply radiates a MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD AT THIS VERY MOMENT glow. Plus, it’s hard to forget the colors (and costumes) that argue for three-strip Technicolor superiority.

Robin and Marian left a mark for similar reasons — Connery and Audrey Hepburn both carry some of the same appeal as Flynn and de Havilland do in their iconic roles. Flynn was just a month shy of 29 years old when The Adventures of Robin Hood first came out in May 1938 and similarly, De Havilland was two months shy of a mere 22. However, Connery and Hepburn play older Robin Hood and older Maid Marian — please consider both Connery and Hepburn were in their mid-40s during Robin and Marian and each had a solid 15-20 years of stardom behind them. Connery and Flynn both have an undeniable robust humor and physicality (both men seemed tailor-made for James Bond, for example) and Hepburn could make claims on de Havilland’s radiant MBWITW glow several times during her career, from Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady to Robin and Marian.

Anyway, I finally watched Robin and Marian for a second time and it holds up as a great movie, right behind only The Adventures of Robin Hood in the Robin Hood cinematic pantheon.

Because of centering around middle age characters, Robin and Marian plays different notes and takes on a greater emotional range than any other Robin Hood film I have ever seen.

It’s definitely not the lusty adventure like The Adventures of Robin Hood. Sure, Robin and Marian has sword fights and scenic vistas and soaring music and horses and romantic clinches and every prerequisite of the genre, as well as King John, King Richard the Lionhearted, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, and Sherwood Forest, but they’re all — both people and places, and every plot event — suffused with melancholy.

To be fair, though, Lester and Connery inject enough good humor and spirit into Robin and Marian to help it avoid being a more downbeat experience like the 1991 Robin Hood starring Kevin Costner. And the scenes between Connery and Hepburn are simply flat-out appealing, rooted in seeing two of the most attractive, most ebullient performers to ever grace the screen share time with each other (and us audience members).

It should also be mentioned that supporting players Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, and Ian Holm contribute to an absolute dynamite cast.

Didn’t we always ponder how it all turned out for Robin Hood, Maid Marian, the Sheriff, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Will Scarlett?

Lester’s film, with a screenplay written by James Goldman (writer of the play, film adaptation, and TV movie version of The Lion in Winter), answers those very questions, but do we viewers feel comfortable with the answers? Are we prepared to see Maid Marian as a nun because Robin Hood, off on his damn crusades and holy wars with Richard and Little John, didn’t write her for the last 20 years? We also found out that she attempted suicide. He’s back, though, and it’s obvious that Robin Hood and Maid Marian are destined to be together. They might initially hate it and initially fight it, she invariably more than he, but they are pulled together rather than apart.

All roads lead toward a final showdown between Robin Hood and the Sheriff (Robert Shaw). They fight like two worn-out, downtrodden men with many, many battles behind them and none ahead of them, who have resigned themselves to their final destiny. They fight because it’s their duty, or their almost perverse obligation to each other as hero and villain. They really don’t want to be fighting each other at this precise historical moment, it feels like, BUT THEY MUST FIGHT TO THE DEATH. There’s none of the joy in this fight that can be found in great film sword fights like the one, for example, between Robin Hood (Flynn) and the Sheriff (Rathbone) in The Adventures of Robin Hood. This final showdown, just like Robin and Marian overall, gives us something that’s different from any other purely adventure movie. All the main players have lived through considerable pain, considerable disappointment, and the film serves a reminder (from early on and throughout) there’s flesh-and-blood and real-life experience behind every legend, every song, every ode, every hymn, every myth.

Maid Marian gives Robin Hood (and us) some final words, “I love you. More than all you know. I love you more than children. More than fields I’ve planted with my hands. I love you more than morning prayers or peace or food to eat. I love you more than sunlight, more than flesh or joy or one more day. I love you more than God.”

Forced Vengeance (1982)

FORCED VENGEANCE (1982) **1/2
Slow motion’s absolutely vital to understanding the cinematic and TV work of the one and only Carlos Ray Norris.

Slow motion’s everywhere, in action movies, sporting events, movie musicals, etc. To the point that we don’t even realize how everywhere it’s become.

Over the decades, for example, slow motion became a customary tool in violent scenes, from Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch to The Matrix and beyond. Sometimes, I think Gee whiz, that’s awesome and very artfully done, but mostly I just think That’s super lame. I take off points for the obligatory and cheap use of slow motion.

Let’s see, off the top of my head, I deducted from The Lion King and Teen Wolf and Young Guns for their abuse of slow motion late in their motion picture spreads, while Kickboxer 2 flogs viewers with slow motion until it’s like receiving a slow motion roundhouse upside the head. For crying out loud, though, it’s slow motion, super slow even, and that gives us a greater chance to duck out of the way and to see all the cheap audience manipulation at play. I mean, I ducked the Kickboxer 2 roundhouse and found the Siskel & Ebert review playing alongside the movie inside my head esp. Ebert imitating the sounds of slow motion. It was more entertaining that way.

That brings us full roundhouse back to Norris, one of the foremost slow motion abusers.

A former co-worker said that his ears were ringing for a long time after he watched the Who play one of the Day on the Green concerts at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. He talked about being whacked upside the head by their incredible Wall of Noise. I soaked up this conversation.

“In 1976, the Who entered the Guinness Book of World Records for performing the loudest concert in history at the time during their concert at England’s Charlton Athletic Grounds with 76,000 watts at 120 decibels. This record would stand for nearly a decade.”

You can bet they used the Rock-o-meter from Rock ‘N’ Roll High School.

Anyway, now I will make the case for something that’s louder than any rock concert or sporting event, any plane taking flight, any hyena’s laugh, and any howler monkey.

For a couple months, I visited my Grandma for her bingo dominance Tuesday and Thursday. After the bingo hour, we’d return to her room and she’d turn her TV back on. Naturally, it would be Walker, Texas Ranger on Hallmark. Of course. At 3 every day, every single TV in the nursing home would simultaneously be turned on full volume and tuned in to Walker, Texas Ranger. That’d be probably close to 100 TVs. Yeah, we’ll go with 100 for the sake of hyperbole.

I’ve never in my life heard anything louder than 100 full blast TVs simultaneously reverberating Walker slow motion roundhouse kicks.

Guinness, book it.

I deducted a half-star from Forced Vengeance because it broke through my pain threshold for slow motion consumption early on during the final act leading toward a grand finale.

You have been forewarned.

Once again, though, a poster for a Norris spectacular earns four stars.