It's into this stale cauldron that "The Adventures of Robin Hood" plopped itself into, siding squarely with the royalist world view. Released in 1938, this highly adventurous, in keeping with the title, Robin Hood was portrayed by Erol Flynn as a dazzling, jolly rogue with a dead serious sense of honor when it came to protecting his king. When that king is dumb enough to get captured and held for ransom while journeying back from one of those Kill Muslims crusades they had back then, plots to steal his throne are abound, which offer the perfect opportunity to market Robin as a jovial rebel and ultimately as protector of the status quo.
This primacy of authority is sold to the audience from the very beginning of the film. The introductory title card expounding on the history that led us to our current laments begins with the phrase, "In the year of Our Lord, 1191..." "Our" is a pretty presumptuous adjective, but capitalizing it is downright insecure.
From there we dive right into the main conflict of the film. Sir John, Richard the Lionheart's brother, uses King Richard's absence to steal the throne for himself. There's no doubt who the bad guys are as John is portrayed as deliciously evil by an effete Claude Rains, and just to be sure of his mal-intent, the producers made him a ginger. Here he teams with Sir Guy of Gisbourne, played by a stern Basil Rathbone, to tax the populace ostensibly to pay Richard's ransom, but in reality he intends to keep it. And what of poor Richard, floundering in the wind as he helplessly awaits rescue? Well, they have assassins for that.
It seems only one man in England will resist such treachery. In swings Erol Flynn on a vine, armed with white teeth, expert arrowship, and green tights that could conquer nations. Confronting Sir John at Gisbourne's castle, Robin declares himself an enemy of John and every coward unwilling to pledge allegiance to the true king, Richard, and narrowly escapes after committing several acts of homicide in self-defense or something. Really, those luckless guards ought to unionize.
A story like this wouldn't be half as appealing without a little romance, and into that slot steps Maid Marian, played by the luminous Olivia de Havilland. Luminous and feisty, mind you, for it wouldn't be a romance without a little friction. At first, Marian isn't buying Robin's pitch. Like John, she's a Norman, and Robin's Saxon pedigree naturally puts them on opposite sides. Their relationship follows the standard pattern of films of this era. Wild beast lashes out. Wild beast tamed by master. Master and beast wed in blissful matrimony. And that's what happens here. She's antagonistic at first, seeing him as a common rebel, but she merely has the wrong allegiances. Eventually she's corrected by witnessing Robin's virility in battle and generosity to the poor and goes completely over to him. At this point she becomes one of the main drivers in the story, taking mortal risks to alert Robin of John's continuing schemes, but the taming has begun. Her heart is captured and eventually she'll settle into that conventionally happy role of being someone else's property.
Tying things up in a traditional gender binary suggests a sexual purity on the minds of the filmmakers, but there was another kind of purity being pushed here that I found just as interesting. Throughout the film, we're reminded that Robin is a Saxon, a native if you will, and John and his cohorts are Normans, interlopers to pure English lands. Robin as a Saxon is not only defending his true king but also a purely English England against foreign invaders of an unseemly sort. Of course, the Celts probably felt the same way about the Saxons when the Saxons invaded, but that's just historical context. I mean, why even...
All this regressiveness is packaged in possibly the handsomest production of its day. The three-strip Technicolor must have looked spectacular back then and still does. The blue skies and green of the forests had never looked so true, and the characters' costumes run the gamut of practically the full color spectrum. Erol Flynn became a star in black and white, but the color cinematography suits him better than anyone else I can think of. He comes to life and commands every moment, even if he was a somewhat awful "technical" actor.
This was his third pairing with de Havilland, and it's easy to see why Warner Bros. went back to that well. They have chemistry and also an ease together. Not a dull familiarity, but rather they seemed to genuinely enjoy one another. The same can be said for the entire supporting cast. Every performer fit their character like a glove and had the vibe of a Shakespeare company that had been at this a long time.
The script took no risks and that's probably how audiences wanted it. This was an adventure film, so the emphasis was on the action. No time for existential ditherings in this one. It simply introduces us to the bad guys, brings in Robin as the hero, and they all have at it. Another binary without subtlety. Good vs. cartoonish evil, no grays or ambiguities allowed. Finally, they couldn't resist wrapping things up in an all-is-well-in-the-world nuptial. I guess divorce rates had to skyrocket before writers gave up on that trope.
If there's one thing that stood out for me more than anything, it's Flynn's physical exuberance. The way he runs and jumps and darts all over sets him apart from, say, a Bogart or a Gable. With his wide, broad-toothed smile and his hearty laugh, he has no contemporary. He's spry, doubtless, and without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Fighting to restore a warlord over a usurper warlord never looked like so much fun.
