Product Details

• Actors: Tyrone Power, Orson Welles, Cécile Aubry, Jack Hawkins, Michael Rennie
• Directors: Henry Hathaway
• Writers: Talbot Jennings, Thomas B. Costain
• Producers: Louis D. Lighton
• Format: Color, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: May 1, 2007
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000ND91X6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,051 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Black Rose" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Set in the thirteenth century, an Englishman travels to the Far East joining the caravan of Bayan, a warrior taking gifts to Kubla Khan, but then risks his life for a woman called the Black Rose who has been kidnapped to be Kubla Khan's concubine.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: NR
Release Date: 1-MAY-2007
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Of My Favorites, July 14, 2007

By 

Emily "Em's Joie de Weird" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Black Rose (DVD)

I love this old-fashioned Historical Romance/Adventure about an exiled Saxon nobleman determined to make his way in the world, Marco Polo style. Tyrone Power is in his prime as Walter of Gurnie, and Orson Welles is completely convincing as Gayan, a clever, ruthless general for Genghis Khan. The romance in this movie is never cloying or unconvincing, and the sets are gorgeous, especially in the Forbidden City of the Empress of China. The movie manages to pack a lot of story into its 2-hour running time, but never seems rushed. I wish they still made them like this!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If Marco Polo were a Saxon, April 18, 2007

By 

J. A. Eyon "Little Raven" (Seattle - USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Black Rose (DVD)

This is one of those old Hollywood saturated-color films that successfully transports me to another time and place, even on subsequent viewings. The plot steamrolls over its problems, leaving me with the sense of having had an exciting journey from England to North Africa to China.

It's based on a Thomas B Costain's novel of the same name and it brings from its source enuf 13th century details to give the story a historical feeling. The exquisite location photography of Jack Cardiff (in England and Morocco) completes the phenomenon.

Tyrone Power (as a Saxon embittered with Norman England) heads a fine, mostly British cast. He may be a tad bit too old and too stiff, but he's personable and has good chemistry with Jack Hawkins as a fellow Saxon runaway, and with the massively charismatic Orson Welles as Bayan of the Hundred Eyes (a historical Mongol General).

Cécile Aubry as "The Black Rose" is a mixed bag. She's gives a very good performance as the over-eager half-English, half-Arabic girl trapped in the Mongol caravan. But she's blonde and blue-eyed! She has a French, not an Arabic accent. And she's too little-girl-cute for my taste.

This is not a action/adventure movie by today's standards. It's too thoughtful. But that's why I like this film more.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An earnest Tyrone Power, a succulently hammy Orson Welles and an adventure from Norman castles to Chinese palaces and back again, May 10, 2007

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Black Rose (DVD)

And what's a black rose? We're told it is the name given to the clove, the most precious of spices. In this case, the clove is Maryam, played by Cecile Aubry. She was a small French actress, discovered, it is said, by producer Darrell F. Zanuck, and who looks no older than 14. She has a small mouth which is filled with tiny teeth and a plump tongue, and she occasionally jumps about to express enthusiasm. If Vera-Ellen and Charlie McCarthy had ever had a child, it would look a lot like Cecile Aubry. The movie, The Black Rose, is no stinker, but it suffers from Aubry in the role. Unfortunately, it also suffers because Tyrone Power, playing Walter of Gurnie, a young scholar in his early twenties, looks every bit the 39-year-old man he was. The one insuperable drawback to the movie is its disjointed nature. We move from Norman England 200 years after William the Conqueror, to the middle-east and then on to a Mongol army moving and battling its way toward China, then to the imperial court of China itself, and finally back to England. We have a movie which is part historical adventure, part travelogue, part uneasy romance and, with Orson Welles playing the Mongol general Bayan with false eyelids, chubby cheeks and greasy skin, part succulent ham. The movie features some great scenic set-ups, interesting acting in one or two of the secondary parts, particularly by Jack Hawkins, and a nice look at a marching mongol horde, but on balance I think it is one of Power's weakest romantic-adventure films.

Walter of Gurnie, the illegitimate son of a Saxon lord who had married a Norman woman, is a hot-headed Oxford student who has left his studies when he heard his father has died. He hates, with good reason, the Normans. One night he joins a band of fellow Saxons led by Tristram Griffin (Jack Hawkins), an excellent bowman, in an attack on the castle which had been his father's. He planned to free some Saxon hostages held by his step-mother and her son, as well as to claim the boots his father had left in his father's will. In this will his father had publicly acknowledged him as his son. As a result of the attack, Walter and Tris must flee, and Walter decides they should go adventuring to Cathay to win gold, jewels and fame. Along the way he meets the great Mongol general, Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, who takes an interest in the two. Walter and Tris also are tricked into hiding a young woman, Maryam, who is one of dozens of maidens being sent to the Great Khan and who are traveling with Bayan's army. After battles and marches, archery contests, chess games and a walk along the rope of death, Walter is sent to the Chinese court to explain how powerful Bayan is and why the Chinese should surrender the imperial city. Now we have luxurious surroundings, manicured gardens, treacherous mandarins, jewels sewn into coats and a harrowing escape in which Walter and Maryam are separated. Finally, we're back in England, where the king honors Walter for his bravery and for bringing back the knowledge of the Chinese. All seems settled except for his lost love for Maryam. Will they be reunited? And how? See the movie.

Tyrone Power was Zanuck's champion swashbuckler. Power was, for me, a very earnest actor. In his early years he had great good looks. As he aged, his face thickened a bit, his eyebrows grew dense and his five-o-clock shadow must have been a real challenge for Fox's make-up artists. He was an actor who longed to show he could do more than prance around the scenery with a sword in his hand. In two movies, Nightmare Alley and Witness for the Prosecution, he fought for the chance to show he could handle unpleasant roles, and he did very well. Yet for the most part he stayed safely playing conventional star heroes. He died of a heart attack when he was only 44. He was filming, what else, a dueling scene for one more big, expensive and forgettable adventure movie.

For those who enjoy reading sweeping historical adventures, you might like the source book, The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain. It's one of those big, fat novels that goes from adventure to adventure. Costain probably is barely remembered now. He was a Canadian journalist who, in his early sixties, unexpectedly struck it rich as a popular novelist. For ten years he wrote best selling fiction and well-respected popular histories. His fiction is packed with well-researched history and his histories read like well-written novels. The Black Rose is still a good read. The Black Rose

The DVD transfer does not have the crispness and rich color we've come to hope for. It looks like the DVD was made from a reasonably well-maintained source print which received no restoration work. One of the extras is a feature with Power's children and a former wife discussing him and his work. I only sampled it.