Skip to main content

The Crusades (1935)

Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Crusades. Feature film. (1935, 125 mins) IMDB

...a Hollywood romance with swords thrown in...

T

he title is extremely misleading. The film is not about the crusades but a love story set in the midst of a crusade led by King Richard.

Richard never spoke English and barely even lived on the British isles. He was a Norman who spoke French, but you wouldn't know that from this film.

The filmmakers also want you to believe the King would have been caught up in something as trivial as love. Not a chance. Marriage wasn't about love. It was about matters of state, about power, and with that power, wealth.

A true-to-history film about King Richard and the Crusades would lack romance and therefore wouldn't appeal to a broad audience.

What we have in this film is nothing more than a love story. Richard is betrothed to Alice, the sister of King Philip of France. He doesn't want to marry her. He decides to go on the crusade because there's a chance he'll die and therefore not have to marry Alice.

In Marseille, he negotiates with a local King for food. Richard will marry the king's daughter in exchange for cattle and grain. Richard doesn't attend the wedding--he sends his sword instead. The oddest wedding ceremony I've ever seen. His wife to be is the gorgeous Loretta Young. She despises his boorish behaviour. He can't even bother to meet her, but when he does meet her, it's love at first sight.

Once in the Holy Lands, the battles against the Arabs begin, but oddly we don't see very much of it. The camera is held in close, never back to give a wide shot. I can guess at the reason--money. To film it otherwise would have cost a great deal more. As a result, the film doesn't have the feel we're used to when battles are shown. DeMille would make up for it in his later films.

THE CRUSADES is not a great film. It's mildly interesting with a completely absurd Hollywood romance narrative. I expected a great deal more from this film.

Posted 2009/03/29 at 18h14ET in Movie Commentary.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read
2 comments
Read more

Days 9-108: Writing a Novel—The Deep Blue Hold

November 25th, 2016 to March 5, 2017 Note: Unedited writings from my notebook for this novel. Square bracket items represent added comments. At 15:53 Office ... And so began a three month odyssey away from writing this novel, The Deep Blue Hold. ... W herein I try to explain why I stopped working on this novel. The shortest answer is I gave up. The short explanation is I struggle with mental health issues (MDD, GAD, PTSD) that paralyse me at times. When it happens, I’m not able to do much of anything. Don’t want to do anything and that includes things one might expect to enjoy. For a while I spent time trying to create some thirty-second videos that would play a word puzzle like a crossword. Here’s the clue. Here’s the blank spaces. And after an interval, one of the letters would appear until all the letters appear. A bit of a crossword puzzle in that sometimes you come to a word where crossover words give you certain letters and you have to fill in the rest. A
Post a Comment
Read more

Words: BONE—GONE—LOAN—BOAN

Friday, March 31, 2017 You’d think BONE would rhyme with GONE but no. This is the English language after all. But BONE does rhyme with LOAN so we’ll spell it BOAN. It will take some time to update all the existing writings but it can be done. Meanwhile, if you smash up your car, the insurance company will allow you to get a LOANER and if you happen to meet the right person you may get a BOANER. boan Post comments on facebook page Posted 2017/03/31 at 17h28ET in Words .
Post a Comment
Read more