Customer Reviews

Robin Hood

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ah, a budget of $1 million. It sounds so small today when there are films with budgets topping $200 million. But back in 1922, this was the most expensive movie made. And it's clear where the money has gone. Lush sets, huge castles created just for this movie (with special tapestries, hand and foot holds, etc. to allow Fairbanks to show off his stuntman's prowess.) And then the extras. In one of the earliest ballads, Robin Hood had a band of 140 men. Here, there are far, far more. And no digitally extras either. Just low-paid (or more likely, no-paid) folks prancing around.

Yes, prancing. Sigh.

The Merry Men skip and jump, with little edge that outlaws would have. Not so with Fairbanks successor Errol Flynn, as charismatic and righteous as that Robin Hood was, there was a real sense of anger at the problems being inflicted on the poor. This earlier (although not the first) Robin Hood movie is much lighter fare.

The story is only threadbare. And only a few scenes from the ballads appear. Instead, half the film is taken up with jousting matches and other things which seem out of place in a Robin Hood film. Like modern-day blockbusters, it's big on spectacle and low on plot and character.

It's a classic, but it doesn't grab me the way Flynn's Robin Hood does. It lacks the heart and soul.

Now, onto the DVD quality. The image is surprisingly good for an 80-year old film. And they've gone with the colour-tinting process. Forest scenes, for example, are tinted green. That adds a warmth to the film lacking in its characters.

Unfortunately, the sound isn't as good. The score is electronic and very noticeably so. And it sounds more like an electronic kazoo than a real piano or organ as it should be. That is very distracting. Which is unfortunate, because the score itself is adapted from the 1890s Robin Hood stage musical composed by Reginald de Koven (this production introduced the wedding song "O Promise Me"). It would have been nice to hear a less synthetic version of de Koven's score.

So, riddle me this -- why is this film on DVD and not the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn? (And while its nice to see Fairbanks turn as Robin Hood and Zorro on DVD, I'd really like to own the Flynn and Tyrone Powers versions of those films.)

"Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood" is one of the greatest adventure films the cinema has ever produced.
It no longer exists in a pristine version, so I'm afraid this is the best way to watch it, and although any company that produces DVDs of silent films should be applauded this disc should be approached with some caution.
The reason is the score. I hate synth scores on silent films. Firstly it is totally out of place to stick an electronic soundtrack on an old film - but here it really is unacceptable. The recording of the score is so irritating and twee it cheapens the film. Robin Hood screams out for a full orchestral score, not a tinny electronic beat that sounds like a cheap Casio keyboard.
Fair enough, points can be made for cost etc. but the simple fact remains - would you pay good money to see Gone With the Wind or Titanic with a cheesy synth score? Although the film itself would remain the same, so much of the power and passion would be destroyed when the score is replaced. Would Jaws or even Psycho have anything near the same effect if you stuck the Backstreet Boys over the shower scene?
The same goes for silent films, perhaps more so. To watch the Brownlow and Gill restoration of Fairbanks' Thief of Bagdad is to watch a beautiful classic of the silent screen with a perfect score conducted by Carl Davis. To watch the same film with a syth or organ score is to see half the film. It looks exactly the same - but loses so much sweep and power.
Get the DVD, switch the sound off and stick on a suitable CD. The film is improved hugely. (By the way, using public domain classical recordings is the easiest and cheapest way to get a decent score - if any DVD producers are reading this...)

While the magnificent 1938 "The Adventures of Robin Hood", starring the perfectly cast Errol Flynn in his signature role is by far my favourite version of this famous story this incredibly lavish 1922 version starring Douglas Fairbanks comes a respectable second second. With its extravagant photography, costumes and amazingly lavish sets which were the biggest built in Hollywood up until that time this film really illustrates perfectly the type of film vehicle that Douglas Fairbanks became renowned the world over for. While he does seem much older looking in the role of Robin Hodd than Errol Flynn did in the later version, Fairbanks has all the expected characteristics of the famed bandit down to perfection, and is as gallant, adventurous and full of energy as one would expect from the actor at his peak. Full of daring do, sword fits, devious villians, and with our hero jumping onto horses and climbing up Castle battlements to protect the lovely maid Marion, this version of Robin Hood along with his superb "The Thief of Bagdad", really are the "A Typical", performances by Douglas Fairbanks in swashbuckling roles that became his trademark during the silent era.

I don't ever write reviews but I had to comment on this. First this is a wonderful film. Secondly the print is quite good as well - although having none of the original tints. So I would give the film itself an overall ****. But this has to be the most inappropriate soundtrack ever issued. It consists of a lone pianist playing a group of a half dozen or so well-known Scott Joplin ragtime numbers repeated over and over for two full hours. It's enough to drive you nuts! At the great climax when Robin's merry band storms the castle, we are treated to a slow version of Joplin's "The Entertainer." You remember: the theme of "The Sting!" Who knew Scott Joplin lived during the reign of William the Lionheart and Robin of Locksely? Buy it for the film but then either view it without sound or add your own track of Fats Domino or the Stones or even, maybe, the Village People. Anything would be better than the musical disaster that accompanies this print. Incidently this is a DVDR not a commercially produced DVD but that doesn't adversely affect the print quality.

Slow moving though it may be in the first half, Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood really picks up in the second, when our hero returns to England and becomes the outlaw hero of song and legend. Once he affects his transformation, Fairbanks goes hopping, skipping and leaping through the rest of the picture - I don't think he ever walks in the usual way - and his Merry Men follow suit! This movie hasn't lost any of its pure fun and excitement in the 85 + years since it premiered in 1922. As with many home video releases of silent pictures, I do wish the releasing company had taken care to provide a more appropriate music track. (When a big-budget silent movie such as this was originally released, the distributors often sent specially composed sheet music along with the rental. That's how important it was.) The picture quality is amazing after all these years. This Reel Enterprises edition compares very favorably with the Kino edition. It seems to have been based on the identical print.

Though perhaps not as consistently action-filled and developed plotwise as other of Fairbanks's films, I really enjoyed this one. I was prepared for it to be a typical silent costume drama as it began, but though it does have a number of the same potential drawbacks (particularly for someone new to the silent cinema), such as an awful lot of intertitles, a plot that could use more definition and shape, a lot of different characters to keep track of, and a longer running time than most silents, it's a lot more interesting and faster-paced than most seem to be. And some people aren't going to like costume dramas anyway because not everyone likes history, or at least the historical era in that particular film. Medieval history was never one of my own fields of interest until just recently; in the past several years I've come to love that era more and more, so the historical setting held an added interest for me. (Usually these costume dramas seem to be set in 17th or 18th century France.) The first half of the film does move a bit slowly at times, which certainly could bore some people, but that serves to set up the situation and characters. This cinematic device can work very well at really drawing the viewer into the story and keeping his or her interest in the slowly but surely unfolding plot. The second half is much more action-packed, the kind of thing Doug was famous for, even though it's not the movie to watch if you're interested in seeing him take center-stage for most of the action. With so many other characters here, he's not always going to be the center of the action or even onscreen at all.

Although the jury is still out on just who the real Robin Hood was and when exactly he lived (he appeared on the scene anywhere between 1190 and the 1320s), this version of the famous story is the one that most people are the most familiar with. Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, is in a jousting match witnessed by his good buddy, King Richard I (the Lionhearted), and his jerk of a brother Prince John (later King John I). Prince John's henchman, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, has buckled himself into his saddle to ensure himself of a win, but to his surprise is easily beaten anyway by Huntingdon. It then comes out that Huntingdon is afraid of women, so much so he has trouble getting one to put the wreath of laurels on his head. This fear of women, however, is soon cured when he catches Prince John trying to abduct Lady Marian, whom he, of course, falls head over heels in love with at first sight. King Richard is pleased as punch that his friend finally has a woman to fight for, particularly since they're about to leave on the Third Crusade. (Richard was not so successful on this Crusade as he's made out to be in the movie, particularly not after his truce with Sultan Saladin; he was shipwrecked on the way home and wound up in Austria, where he was caught by his enemy Duke Leopold V and held for ransom before being taken back to England.) Before they can even get to the fighting, however, Huntingdon receives a message from Marian, saying that John has taken control and is doing horrible things (which did happen in real life; it's said that England has never had another king named John since because this man was such a horrible evil king). Huntingdon does not get permission from Richard to return to England (he felt that if he knew the real reason he wanted to leave, he would be distracted from doing well on the battlefield), and ends up framed for desertion and thrown into prison. He later manages to escape, and returns to England as Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and who fights against Prince John's evil henchmen. He and his followers are committed to fighting the good fight till Richard comes home and can rule again. Though not as action-packed or edge of one's seat exciting as some of Doug's other films, it's still a very solid and entertaining story.

Extras are outtakes and an excerpt from the 1923 Will Rogers short 'Big Moments from Little Pictures.' The print used for this edition is in wonderful shape (as is to be expected from a Kino release), and the soundtrack used is also very well-chosen, particularly since it's the soundtrack that was originally written for this film in 1922. I didn't find anything inappropriate or annoying about how some of it was performed with a synthesiser. If one's complaints about a DVD release of a classic are as petty as that, then it seems safe to say there's nothing really wrong with it, or at least nothing that the average (non-purist) silent film fan will have any issues with.

Having seen both Robin Hood (2010)and Prince of Persia in a single weekend gave me a craving to revisit this 1922 movie. Any fan of Douglas Fairbanks will find this tremendous fun! He was practicing Parkour long before anyone put a name to it, and this film features some enormous stunts.

It also is a big budget extravaganza with elaborate costumes and ridiculously glorious sets including that silent film set cliche - a royal tent that has an interior at least ten times larger than the exterior. It suits Wallace Beery's larger-than-the-physical-laws-of-reality version of Richard the Lion Heart very well.

I do have a caveat - the dvd version I saw has an insulting musical background that is just a single tinkling ragtime theme repeated over and over and over and over, that at no point bears any relation to the action on screen. It seems to be an aural place holder indicating to the ignorant that the film would have had musical accompaniment if seen in a film palace. Turn it off or suffer.

$1.4 million (adjusted to todays USD, $18 million) in production costs set this movie apart at the time. It was a masterful epic of the silent era. It still holds up ok, though maybe not as well as Flynn's. The movie is packed with amazing sets, funny inter-titles, and tinting that sets mood. The liner notes say that some of the sets were 90 feet high!

The movie, which was the most popular movie of 1922 according to PhotoPlay Magazine, seems to drag a little, occasionally, but tells the rarely told story of Robin Hood's life prior to King Richard's departure on the crusades. The action helps keep the movie going through a lot of it -- but be prepared for a silent-era epic. The film, overall, was enjoyable.

The Kino DVD is great. The picture is generally very clear -- with some scratches. The tinting was superb. My only complaint is the score -- it does seem annoying at first but after a while I adjusted to it and was no longer bothered by it.

The video was of very good quality, and Douglas Fairbanks is always incredible! The story is so different than most modern versions of Robin Hood, it was very interesting to follow. However, a happy honky tonk piano played the same tunes throughout the entire movie. When the mood should have been somber, or tense, or melancholoy, the happy honky tonk piano would not shut up! It really ruined the experience.

Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood may have been a sensation in 1922, but time has not been kind to either the film or Fairbanks' brand of dementedly over-emphatic ham. It's a lavish production with hundreds of extras and massive sets (the staircase, like Alan Hale's Little John, making a reappearance for Errol Flynn's superior 1938 version), but it only works in fits and starts. It's the first half of the film that fares best, focussing on knightly romance in the prelude to Wallace Beery's manically laughing King Richard departing for the Crusades, with some surprisingly effective scenes of wooing and parting. But once Robin and his absurdly mincing men start prancing through Sherwood like a bunch of prima ballerinas on coke, it becomes increasingly laughable and as camp as a very long row of tents to such a degree that even evil Prince John's surprisingly graphic reign of terror can't compensate. Nor is there much in the way of impressive stunt work, leaving a film which never really knows how to make the most of its incredible production values beyond the odd effective scene here and there (according to director Allan Dwan, Fairbanks was never fully convinced about making the film, and it shows). Still, it does have an inspired moment when the Merry Men use a pair of noblemen on ropes for a giant game of conkers that's bonkers enough to forgive at least some of the film's shortcomings.

It's not helped by some of the public domain DVD copies out there, but Kino's 2004 special edition Region 1 NTSC DVD offers a good transfer with some interesting outtakes and a Will Rogers parody from Big Moments from Little Pictures.