Foster on Film

Scaramouche is a gasp from a dying genre.  The simplistic moral structure that was so uplifting in the films of the 30s and 40s was beginning to look silly in the post war world.  Add in that most everything that could be done with the genre in that form had been done, and it’s not

Upper-class Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) has had enough of her cloddish, uncarring husband (Ralph Forbes) and his cad of a friend (Basil Rathbone), so takes off to Cornwall with her two children. There she is taken care of by William (Cecil Kellaway), a servant who’s cleverer than expected and has a secret. She also

One of the standard Swashbuckler plots has the hero masquerading as a fop so his real self can right wrongs and win the maiden, and no film did it better than The Mark of Zorro. Leslie Howard recited doggerel poems as the The Scarlet Pimpernel and Louis Hayward dithered on about banking as The Son of Monte Cristo, but Tyrone Power is on

An aging Don Juan (Douglas Fairbanks) returns to Seville with his servant (Melville Cooper) where he is threatened with jail by his loving wife Dolores (Benita Hume). He visits a few ladies, including a dancer, Antonita (Merle Oberon) and all the town is excited by his return. A young man pretending to be Don Juan

If there is a literary king of the Swashbuckler it would have to be Alexandre Dumas.  His fast-paced historical fiction (which held only a winking acquaintance with actual history) was serialized in French papers in the mid 1800s and was extremely popular.  His stories contained many of the elements that make a good film, so they have

In a time of conflict between Queen Elizabeth I of England (Flora Robson) and King Philip II of Spain (Raymond Massey), an English privateer ship is captured, resulting in young Michael Ingolby (Laurence Olivier) recovering in secret with a Spanish friend of his father’s and that man’s daughter Elena (Tamara Desni). He returns to England,

I’ve always thought of the The Prisoner of Zenda as a “smart” Swashbuckler, and it is, in dialog, character, and structure, if not in story.  The action is first rate, but secondary to the film, for in this case, it is all about words—superbly crafted words—and the voices that pronounce them.  While fun to watch, the true joy

Charismatic but foolish Fanfan (Gérard Philipe) is on his way to a shotgun wedding when a gypsy girl (Gina Lollobrigida, dubbed by Claire Guibert) tells him he is fated to become a great soldier and marry the princess. He escapes and joins the army, only to learn that the gypsy was really the daughter of

Captain Blood marked the beginning of the golden age of Swashbucklers (yes, every genre has an era known as its golden age; just go with it).  Before it, the complications in recording sound while filming the movement inherent in the genre made these films impractical.  Sure, a silent Douglas Fairbanks could leap off a mast, but sound swashbuckling

Singer Deborah McCoy (Yvonne De Carlo, best known as Lily Munster) is a stowaway on Capt. Duval’s ship when it is captured by the infamous pirate, Baptiste (Philip Friend). She escapes and ends up in New Orleans under the tutelage of Mme. Brizar (Elsa Lanchester), where she is trained to be an entertainer at high

The Sea Hawk is a well-filmed, well-acted adventure yarn of pseudo-pirates and romance on the high seas, based, in name only, on a Rafael Sabatini novel.  Errol Flynn plays privateer Geoffrey Thorpe with the charisma and bravado that was his trademark in the 30s and 40s.  For two hours, we are taken into the Swashbuckling world where Thorpe

In London, Sir Percy Blakeney (David Niven) is an effete loudmouth and fool, but in France he is the heroic Scarlet Pimpernel, who frees the innocent from the worst excesses of the French Revolution. His adversary is Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack), who will stop at nothing to attain the Pimpernel’s head or torch him or shoot