Heaven is for Heroes
The Flame and the Arrow (1950)
directed by Jacques Tourneur
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
There is a moment in this Technicolor adventure that encapsulates the many facets of my affection for the liberal, liberally-toothed gem that was Burt Lancaster. Tourneur, who spends too much of the movie filming a maudlin family adventure, turns out the lights – the way he used it, at RKO, or in the forest twilight of Canyon Passage – and in that blue-beyond-black that only Technicolor knows, a great line in a film without them whispers in the keep. “Now, Marchese, we’re in the dark, where a sword is just a long knife.”
It is delivered like a hiss, but Lancaster’s smile radiates through. The threat is not lost on the victim, nor the laughs on us. But to love that one-time A-list giant is to love the threat and the laugh together. One need not take him as seriously as he took himself, even dressed like Robin Hood in Italy, bandying words with towheaded boys, but be generous, reader. That isn’t a stuntman leaping from horseback or castle chandelier, but the main attraction, reunited with his partner and good friend Nick Cravat from old acrobat days before the war. When an archer’s arrow sings down a hawk, it’s Lancaster's Dardo Bartoli (the jokes write themselves) who first rends the bird’s flesh with his big, bright chompers.
I’m making that up, but The Flame and the Arrow is a backlot jungle gym for a man like Burt Lancaster, who probably abhorred the histrionics of the Method actors who replaced him but never would have missed a chance to fence or somersault or climb. Clark Gable always clocked out right at 5:00, and never faster than when Burt asked for that after-work drink each afternoon on the set of Run Silent, Run Deep. But you can’t say either one of them didn’t love his job.
directed by Jacques Tourneur
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
There is a moment in this Technicolor adventure that encapsulates the many facets of my affection for the liberal, liberally-toothed gem that was Burt Lancaster. Tourneur, who spends too much of the movie filming a maudlin family adventure, turns out the lights – the way he used it, at RKO, or in the forest twilight of Canyon Passage – and in that blue-beyond-black that only Technicolor knows, a great line in a film without them whispers in the keep. “Now, Marchese, we’re in the dark, where a sword is just a long knife.”
It is delivered like a hiss, but Lancaster’s smile radiates through. The threat is not lost on the victim, nor the laughs on us. But to love that one-time A-list giant is to love the threat and the laugh together. One need not take him as seriously as he took himself, even dressed like Robin Hood in Italy, bandying words with towheaded boys, but be generous, reader. That isn’t a stuntman leaping from horseback or castle chandelier, but the main attraction, reunited with his partner and good friend Nick Cravat from old acrobat days before the war. When an archer’s arrow sings down a hawk, it’s Lancaster's Dardo Bartoli (the jokes write themselves) who first rends the bird’s flesh with his big, bright chompers.
I’m making that up, but The Flame and the Arrow is a backlot jungle gym for a man like Burt Lancaster, who probably abhorred the histrionics of the Method actors who replaced him but never would have missed a chance to fence or somersault or climb. Clark Gable always clocked out right at 5:00, and never faster than when Burt asked for that after-work drink each afternoon on the set of Run Silent, Run Deep. But you can’t say either one of them didn’t love his job.
posted by NPK at 6:44 PM
<< Home