Black Gate

Romeo and Juliet, 1936

William Shakespeare was the greatest playwright in history (fight me!), but his record as a screenwriter is, shall we say, uneven. There’s a long list of films adapted from or inspired by the works of the Bard of Avon, but most of them are considerably less memorable than their sources. However, sometimes a filmmaker steps up and meets the challenge and the result is a movie one can watch over and over with admiration and pleasure. Here are three films based on Shakespeare that also play regularly at our notional Theatre of the Crossed Swords. [Insert favorite Shakespeare quote here!]

Romeo and Juliet

Rating: *****
Origin: USA, 1936
Director: George Cukor
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

What’s Romeo and Juliet doing in the Cinema of Swords? Isn’t that a love story? It is, but this version is a love story punctuated by four superb rapier duels, three of them involving Basil Rathbone, and one of those is against Leslie Howard — that’s right, Sherlock Holmes crosses swords with the Scarlet Pimpernel!

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The Night Gallery on DVD

Few things in life are more trying than playing second fiddle to a sibling whose charm, poise, good looks and dazzling achievements you can never hope to match. Just ask Night Gallery, forever standing in the shadow of one of the most legendary and beloved of all television shows, The Twilight Zone. (At this point I am morally – if not legally – required to disclose that I am a spoiled youngest child who got every freakin’ thing he ever wanted, at least according to my sister.)

In case you need reminding, Night Gallery was an outré-story anthology show hosted by Rod Serling that ran for three seasons on NBC, from 1969 through 1973. Each hour-long episode featured two, three, or even four separate stories (at least until the third season, when the show’s running time was cut back to a half hour), which Serling, in his role as the curator of a museum of the macabre, would introduce with a painting (or occasionally a piece of sculpture) illustrative of the tale, hence the series name.

Night Gallery shares many qualities with its predecessor, but several things distinguish it from the earlier show. Like Twilight Zone, Night Gallery was created by Rod Serling and he wrote some or all of over half of the episodes, but he did not produce the series. This was a big change and it meant that he had far less authority over Night Gallery than he did over his previous creation. (As the creator and face of the show, he thought that his wishes would be respected even without the producing title, but it often didn’t turn out that way.)

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Like most of you, I read and enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, so I was happy to see it get the premium specialty TV treatment, although I didn’t have the time or the right subscriptions to watch it until this year. I just binged all three seasons, and it’s a gem. It has a few flaws, the most major being its pacing, which might be why Starz dropped it after season three, but even these three seasons are a work of art.

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The Sword and the Rose (Walt Disney, 1953)

What? Has Lawrence run out of theme ideas? Has the well gone dry at last? Perish the thought! I was just looking at my list and saw there were several movies with “Sword” in the title that we hadn’t covered yet, and they’re all worth discussing, so here we are.

The Sword and the Rose

Rating: ***
Origin: UK/USA, 1953
Director: Ken Annakin
Source: Walt Disney Home Video

This is based on the popular 1898 novel When Knighthood Was in Flower by Charles Major, a Victorian historical romance that had been filmed twice before in the silent era, and has just enough swashbuckling in it for inclusion here. Despite its title, it’s not set in medieval times but during the early reign of King Henry VIII, telling the story of his sister, Princess Mary Tudor, and her (largely unhistorical) love for Charles Brandon, a mere captain of the guard. Brandon is played by Disney’s chosen leading man of the time, Richard Todd, in perhaps his best performance, though he was better known for Dam Busters (1955). Princess Mary is played by Glynis Johns, who has the impossible task of making her willful and selfish character seem adorable, but she’s so good she almost pulls it off. The leads are supported by a cast of fine British actors that includes James Robertson Justice as King Henry, Michael Gough as the Duke of Buckingham, and Rosalie Crutchley as Queen Katherine, all benefiting from a strong script with a lot of cutting gibes and haughty rejoinders.

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The Conqueror (1956)

Let’s get barbaric! Preferably on horseback in central or western Asia. Our first movie, John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror, is so terrible that it’s famous for being terrible, while our second film, The Tartars, is just as terrible but unfairly and surprisingly overlooked, especially since one of its stars is Orson Welles. Ah, but our third movie, Taras Bulba…. Now that’s good stuff. So, ferment some milk, shave your skull except for a scalplock, and leave your effete civilizations behind, because we’re going steppin’ on the Steppes!

(And by the way, if this kind of setting is to your taste, you’re going to love the Harold Lamb short story collections edited by our own Howard Andrew Jones, stories that were a major inspiration and influence for Robert E. Howard. The books, including all four volumes of The Complete Cossack Adventures, plus Swords from the Desert, Swords from the West, Swords from the East, and Swords from the Sea, are still available in digital format — and if you move quickly, there may still be a few print copies left.

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My son is *super* excited about the MCU’s latest TV venture, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I thought Marvel did spectacular work with WandaVision (see my reviews here and here) which was a real stylistic and tonal departure from the movies. I came to Falcon and the Winter Soldier with less excitement in part because sometimes I feel just saturated with cape and cowl stories. Luckily, the first two episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier delivered in a way that really worked for me.

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The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)

Your honor, I stand before you charged with three counts of Monte Cristo, and while I could plead insanity, instead I’ll Dumas best to explain.

(I slay me.)

Alexandre Dumas’s most popular and enduring novels are The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, and one of the most remarkable things about them is that he wrote them at the same time! They were published in simultaneous serial form in two different Parisian periodicals, with T3M finishing first because Monte Cristo was the longer novel. Though written together, the two are very different: T3M is an action-packed tale of youthful heroism, practically the definition of a swashbuckler, while Monte Cristo is a slow-burn revenge fantasy, a swashbuckler more in its themes than its action. It still holds up today; if you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it lately, I recommend the Penguin Books translation by the late Robin Buss. (I know a little bit about translating Dumas, so take my word for it!)

But enough about the book: we’re here for the flicks! Monte Cristo was filmed many times during the silent era, and at least three of those adaptations have survived, but this week we’re going to look at the first thirty years of its sound versions in English. Prepare yourself for the vengeance of Edmond Dantès!

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