The Mark of Zorro (1940)

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Starring Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, J. Edward Bromberg, Linda Darnell, Eugene Pallette, Gale Sondergaard, Montagu Love, George Regas, Janet Beecher.

Though it shares its title with the 1920 silent swashbuckler, this isn’t so much a remake as a new telling of the adventures of the fictional folk hero. Aristocratic dandy Don Diego Vega (Power) travels from Madrid to California upon the urging of his father, the recently deposed magistrate; there, he’s horrified by the tyrannical treatment of the peasant class, and chooses to fight back under the guise of a masked avenger known as Zorro. And yet Zorro himself is in short supply in this sturdy but routine adventure, as if the filmmakers were anxious about hiding the matinée idol looks of their star (whom 20th Century Fox hoped could be molded into an Errol Flynn-type of their very own); this tactic ultimately backfired, since Power is well-suited for swordplay and bravado, but he’s a stiff as an aloof fop and a dud as a romantic hero. As the woman who swoons for him, Darnell is similarly lovely yet lackluster, but the villains are at least a cut above—dastardly devil Rathbone and venal coward Bromberg. Uncontested highlight: the exhilarating swordfight between Rathbone and Power (sans mask). Alfred Newman’s score was later re-used for a 1974 made-for-television remake starring Frank Langella as the “fox.”

69/100