ROBIN HOOD

(1922, Allan Dwan) Doug’s Earl of Huntingdon returns in disgrace from the Crusades to find Maid Marian seemingly dead and nasty Prince John running the show – obviously it’s time for Robin! Monstrously epic evocation of the legend, its gargantuan castle set the largest since Intolerance – but of course, when Robin raids the baddies’ lair, just a huge playpen for Doug. With Wallace Beery as King Richard the Lionhearted. Approx. 127 min. 35mm.

 

 

 

Also playing THIEF OF BAGDAD, Dec 21-27

REVIEWS

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“An unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievement, as legendary as the story which inspired it.”
– Kevin Brownlow

“Audiences should judge Robin Hood as you would judge a ballet or a fairy-pantomime.  Look at it for just a moment with simple eyes. Pay attention only to the perfection of the motions, of the motion: the cinema was created to record it. Robin Hood is an army of banners on the march, steel-clad horses galloping, free men dancing in a forest, sprints through a castle built for giants, leaps that traverse space, streams, forests, countrysides.”
– René Clair

“A Janus-like film – looking backward to the Dashing Doug of the early films, forward to the Douglas Fairbanks to come, when the spectacular showman’s side of this nature would be in the ascendant.”
– Richard Schickel

“Robin Hood asserted Fairbanks’s claim to leadership in Hollywood, and his influence can be seen in the spectacles released the following year: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney… as well as a storm of other costume films. Fairbanks ushered in a new era of motion pictures, emphasizing an elaborate scale of production – along with a high level of artistry. The magic and spectacle of the movies is clearly evident in Fairbanks’s superb rendering of the Robin Hood legend.”
– Jeffrey Vance