"The Adventures of Robin Hood"

If you listen to the hosts on Turner Classic Movies our read the writings of movie critics and historians, you will hear and read time and again that this 1938 movie, "The Adventures of Robin Hood", starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland and directed by Michael Curtiz is one of the great, most rousing swashbuckling adventure movies ever.  though

So, I watched it earlier this week.

Sorry, film buffs out there, but I won't be putting this one on my list of "Movies To Take With Me If I Am Ever Stranded On A Desert Island".  I will say this, though, for its time, I suppose that this was a marvel of a movie.  Even today, eighty-one years later and seeing it on TCM in standard definition, the colors by Technicolor are amazingly bright and rich, so it must have been breathtaking to audiences in 1938.  Still, the actions and cheerful laughter of the Merry Men in Sherwood Forest come across as cringingly forced and stilted.  As I watched, I kept thinking that what I really should be watching is Mel Brooks' "Men In Tights".  This one just wasn't for me.

I will also say this.  Olivia de Havilland, who is still with us at age 102, was amazingly beautiful in this one.  She would achieve 

de Havilland and Flynn

true screen immortality the following year as Melanie in "Gone With The Wind".  The movie also costarred Claude Rains as the bad guy Prince John.  Four years after this one, both he and director Curtiz would do much, much better work in a little movie that we like to call "Casablanca."

One star from The Grandstander.