Girls and Gunpowder
The World in His Arms (1952)
directed by Raoul Walsh
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
It took Hollywood to tell the British legend of Robin Hood right - twice. Made 14 years after Errol Flynn won the keys to Prince John's kingdom, and directed by the man who did as much as Michael Curtiz to nurture Flynn's fame, The World in His Arms imagines the early history of the United States as a country of robber kings, in love with the daughters of Russian aristocrats only when the daughters dress like San Francisco whores. Even at sea in an ocean of studio Technicolor (rainbows vacationed in California in 1952), this superlative example of the adventure genre looks extravagant, from the bootblack demeanor of Orthodox Russian robes to the lips, eyes, and pillowed décolletage of Ann Blyth and her good-time West Coast competitors. Like Walsh, Gregory Peck's Captain Jonathan Clark is in it for the cash, and it says a great deal about Walsh's cinematic aspirations that Clark's purchase of Alaska from Tsar Alexander II is no less a fictional feat than the real-life princely, creaking schooners the director hauls out to race on a blustery, full-scale Pacific afternoon.
directed by Raoul Walsh
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
It took Hollywood to tell the British legend of Robin Hood right - twice. Made 14 years after Errol Flynn won the keys to Prince John's kingdom, and directed by the man who did as much as Michael Curtiz to nurture Flynn's fame, The World in His Arms imagines the early history of the United States as a country of robber kings, in love with the daughters of Russian aristocrats only when the daughters dress like San Francisco whores. Even at sea in an ocean of studio Technicolor (rainbows vacationed in California in 1952), this superlative example of the adventure genre looks extravagant, from the bootblack demeanor of Orthodox Russian robes to the lips, eyes, and pillowed décolletage of Ann Blyth and her good-time West Coast competitors. Like Walsh, Gregory Peck's Captain Jonathan Clark is in it for the cash, and it says a great deal about Walsh's cinematic aspirations that Clark's purchase of Alaska from Tsar Alexander II is no less a fictional feat than the real-life princely, creaking schooners the director hauls out to race on a blustery, full-scale Pacific afternoon.
posted by NPK at 8:53 AM
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