The Evolution of Robin Hood
As yet another retelling of the Robin Hood tale -- this time a burly, violent version, courtesy of "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott and star Russell Crowe -- rumbles into theaters this weekend, Salon's Graham Fuller takes stock (continued).
As yet another retelling of the Robin Hood tale — this time a burly, violent version, courtesy of “Gladiator” director Ridley Scott and star Russell Crowe — rumbles into theaters this weekend, Salon’s Graham Fuller takes stock of the changing story arcs and styles across the many on-screen depictions of the fabled Sherwood Forest socialist. –KA
AS CHAOS UNFOLDS, FIND SOLID GROUND…Salon:
In all, Robin Hood has featured in around 50 live-action films, 15 TV series and 15 cartoons. Five were made in the early silent period before Allan Dwan’s 1922 Douglas Fairbanks vehicle set a benchmark for flamboyance. It’s a wildly uneven film, ranging from the monotonously ceremonial to the absurd, with the acrobatic star proving giddy to the point of clownish. Inarguably the one masterpiece in the canon, Michael Curtiz’s swashbuckler “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) starring Errol Flynn implied a comparison between Prince John’s cruelty toward the Saxon peasants with Nazi atrocities in Europe. However, with its chemically bright Technicolor palette, majestic Erich Korngold score and Flynn’s gentrified Robin in sequined Lincoln green, it is wholly artificial, a fantasy extrapolated less from the 15th-century ballads, in which Robin is often brutal, than from 16th-century plays and bucolic Victorian renderings.
In this time of unprecedented challenges, independent journalism is more vital than ever. At Truthdig, we expose what power wants hidden and give you the clarity to make sense of it all.
Your donation helps ensure that truth telling continues.
There have been many renditions of the British folk tale, but none quite as terrible as Otto Bathurst’s recent action flick.
"Like Robin Hood, because Robin Hood was a pirate, we want to take the power from the powerful to give it to the people."
A leaked IMF report shows that there is growing international backing for a tax on bank profits, part of what has been dubbed a “Robin Hood tax” that, if ultimately agreed upon, would raise money to help those pushed deeper into poverty by the global financial crisis and to restore public services.
A hacker using the alias "Neo" has attained almost cult status in Latvia after releasing through Twitter the confidential financial data of allegedly corrupt banks and state-owned companies that profited from the global recession.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.