Post by Salzmank on May 19, 2020 15:52:40 GMT
Rewatched Adventures of Don Juan (1948) last night.
I agree with most of what blogger Jaime Weinman, a perceptive critic whose work I like, wrote here. As Weinman noted, producer Jerry Wald and writers George Oppenheimer and Harry Kurnitz seemed to approach the movie as a semi-parody of Flynn’s earlier swashbucklers, with callbacks (Alan Hale, Una O’Connor, Flynn climbing balconies, cost-saving stock footage from Robin Hood and Elizabeth and Essex) and in-jokes (Don Juan keeps mentioning he’s not as young as he used to be, and has to be talked into becoming a swashbuckler again).
While I enjoyed the movie just as much as I did the first time I saw it, though, Vincent Sherman’s direction was pretty blasé — not half as colorful or interesting as Michael Curtiz’s Flynn collaborations. He didn’t seem to be in on the in-joke. As Weinman noted, too, Flynn’s leading lady, the beautiful Viveca Lindfors as Queen Margaret, turns in a solid performance but doesn’t have the star quality Olivia de Havilland had. (Similarly, the part of the king seems like it was meant for Claude Rains and the part of the villain for Basil Rathbone.) To be fair, that might just because it is an underwritten part.
And the ending felt anticlimactic to me on both viewings: Sure, they weren’t going to have the married queen run off with Flynn in 1948, but they should have squared that circle somehow. On both viewings, I was expecting the prime minister to kill the king before Flynn kills the PM, which, in some complicated Gilbertian legality, would make Margaret queen regnant. Not historical, of course, but then neither was Don Juan himself. Poor Margaret, too, left with a milquetoast of a husband who can’t govern his country while her lover Don Juan gets to roam the countryside looking for girls again.
I loved Max Steiner’s Korngoldesque main theme, but it’s repeated too often — and, what with the flamenco influences, sounds more Spanish than the movie actually is!
So, in other words, not as good as Captain Blood, Robin Hood, or The Sea Hawk, but still fun and clever.
I agree with most of what blogger Jaime Weinman, a perceptive critic whose work I like, wrote here. As Weinman noted, producer Jerry Wald and writers George Oppenheimer and Harry Kurnitz seemed to approach the movie as a semi-parody of Flynn’s earlier swashbucklers, with callbacks (Alan Hale, Una O’Connor, Flynn climbing balconies, cost-saving stock footage from Robin Hood and Elizabeth and Essex) and in-jokes (Don Juan keeps mentioning he’s not as young as he used to be, and has to be talked into becoming a swashbuckler again).
While I enjoyed the movie just as much as I did the first time I saw it, though, Vincent Sherman’s direction was pretty blasé — not half as colorful or interesting as Michael Curtiz’s Flynn collaborations. He didn’t seem to be in on the in-joke. As Weinman noted, too, Flynn’s leading lady, the beautiful Viveca Lindfors as Queen Margaret, turns in a solid performance but doesn’t have the star quality Olivia de Havilland had. (Similarly, the part of the king seems like it was meant for Claude Rains and the part of the villain for Basil Rathbone.) To be fair, that might just because it is an underwritten part.
And the ending felt anticlimactic to me on both viewings: Sure, they weren’t going to have the married queen run off with Flynn in 1948, but they should have squared that circle somehow. On both viewings, I was expecting the prime minister to kill the king before Flynn kills the PM, which, in some complicated Gilbertian legality, would make Margaret queen regnant. Not historical, of course, but then neither was Don Juan himself. Poor Margaret, too, left with a milquetoast of a husband who can’t govern his country while her lover Don Juan gets to roam the countryside looking for girls again.
I loved Max Steiner’s Korngoldesque main theme, but it’s repeated too often — and, what with the flamenco influences, sounds more Spanish than the movie actually is!
So, in other words, not as good as Captain Blood, Robin Hood, or The Sea Hawk, but still fun and clever.