Ivanhoe (1952)

Directed by Richard Thorpe. Starring Robert Taylor, George Sanders, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, Finlay Currie, Robert Douglas, Felix Aylmer, Guy Rolfe, Emlyn Williams, Harold Warrender, Francis De Wolff, Sebastian Cabot, Norman Wooland.

Pageantry and high adventure in the age of medieval romance and chivalry, based on Walter Scott’s 19th- century novel. What could have been an entertaining companion piece to The Adventures of Robin Hood (Hood, played by Warrender and referred to only as “Locksley”, even has a small part to play in these proceedings) ends up being a lavish but sometimes stagnant and uninteresting swashbuckler. The action scenes, including a lengthy jousting tournament and a large-scale castle attack, aren’t photographed or edited with enough energy or fluidity to avoid turning repetitive. They might have been more rousing had I been given more of a reason to care about the outcome, but casting defeats those efforts—Taylor is a charisma-deprived leading man, and he attracts the romantic interests of two different women, but it’s not a choice to savor: lovely but dull Fontaine or the lovelier but duller Taylor? The antagonists fare a little better—Sanders rarely does wrong, no matter the role, and Rolfe chews the scenery as wicked Prince John. Music, production values, and eventful (if conventional) storytelling keep it agreeable, but it simply doesn’t lift my spirits or encourage me to care mightily about the outcome. Taylor and director Thorpe would reunite twice more in the next few years for additional medieval adventures (Knights of the Round Table and The Adventures of Quentin Durward), all of which the actor referred to as his “iron jockstrap movies”.

60/100