aka The Adventures of Quentin Durward
As the 1950s saw TV encroaching ever more deeply on cinema’s turf, Hollywood studios retaliated with unsubtle means: Technicolor, big names, bigger screens, and epic stories. MGM launched its opening salvo in the blockbuster production war, which would climax with Ben-Hur (1959) and wane with Cleopatra (1963), when it released Quo Vadis? in 1951, starring Robert Taylor, and followed it a year later with the more secular Ivanhoe, with Taylor again. A big hit as candy-hued entertainment ripe for a mass audience after all the glumness of ‘40s noir and neorealism, Ivanhoe gave the swashbuckler new popularity. It did this by combining the high style and glossy colour of ‘50s film production with a greater care and interest in adapting classic genre writing and a less stylised, more concussive approach to medieval action than found in the louche fencing of Errol Flynn’s films. Taylor and director Richard Thorpe, an old and skilled studio hand who had helmed several of the rocket-paced ‘30s Tarzan movies, made several more big and flashy historical sagas in the following few years, including the variable All the Brothers Were Valiant and the colourful Knights of the Round Table (1954), which, like many other ‘50s swashbucklers, treads excessively close to comic book in look and dramatic level. Quentin Durward was the last of these medieval pageants, a bruising box office failure although it saw MGM going back to Walter Scott’s well of public domain tomes, and it usually sits deep in Ivanhoe’s shadow.
Quentin Durward is a fun, loose adventure film nonetheless, one that works well on something very close to a self-satirising level for Taylor and Thorpe, tweaking Scott’s narrative to emphasise dry comedy in a fashion that suits Taylor well: in fact, this is probably his best performance. A wry opening title tells us this tale is set in “1465, when Knighthood was a drooping blossom,” a missive that could also refer to the then-shaky state of Hollywood. Taylor’s Durward is the appreciative nephew of the ancient Scottish Lord Crawford (Ernest Thesiger). Crawford, in spite of his age, is planning to get married. The Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (Alec Clunes), has offered him union with the rich and supposedly beautiful Isabelle, Countess of Marcroy, and so Crawford commissions his penniless but talented knight nephew to go to Burgundy and inspect the goods. Crawford’s shopping list of required traits is, “Is she modest? Humble? Chaste? Sweet of nature? Gracious? Properly shy? In a word, is she economical?” Durward makes it to the Burgundian court armed with ducats counted out with careful Scots parsimony by Crawford and the Scottish ambassador, Lord Malcolm (Moultrie Kelsall), because, as another title card says, Quentin like other Scots is “poor in naught but cash.” Quentin is given to reciting his uncle’s officially sanctioned qualities in a speech reminiscent of the brainwashed jive of the soldiers in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), whilst Malcolm irritably cuts him off: “Come come, Durward, we’re Scotsmen together. Besides, he owes me money.”
Just as Quentin arrives, however, Isabelle (Kay Kendall) vanishes from Burgundy. An heiress with claims to important territory, Isabelle’s impending marriage proves to have been forcefully arranged by Charles for the sake of bolstering an alliance with Scotland and securing her land, prior to Charles making a formal break from France and its king, the Machiavellian Louis XI (Robert Morley). Ever the responsible gallant even though the time for his breed of virtue and vigour is over, Quentin braves the guns of robber baron Walter De La Marck (Duncan Lamont) in chasing after Isabelle, and saves her from capture by De La Marck’s bandits. Diplomatic incidents ensue as Isabelle takes refuge with Louis. Charles, knowing this, uses it as a pretext to start war. Charles’ envoy Count De Creville (a strong if brief turn from Powell and Pressburger favourite Marius Goring) makes a truculent appearance at Louis’ court, where he throws down his gauntlet before the king, forcing Louis to risk humiliation or worse in seeking peaceful solutions. Meanwhile Quentin, to find out whether Isabelle really is with Louis, tries to join the royal service. Rejected because he’s too honest for Louis, who only trusts men whose service he can buy, Quentin stages a mock assassination attempt that involves very real legerdemain. He succeeds in penetrating Louis’ castle to hold a knife to the king’s throat, before offering himself as a worthier guard. Louis is impressed as only a man of his unscrupulous humour could be, and he hires Quentin, but soon sacrifices him in a political game, as he decides to use Isabelle as a tempting morsel to turn De La Marck into an ally against Charles: Quentin must die protecting the lady from a staged kidnap to make the incident look convincing.
Quentin Durward has similarities to some of the other, playful ‘50s swashbucklers like The Crimson Pirate (1954) and Against All Flags (1952), but avoids their loud slapstick and deliberate campiness in favour of more realistic action, and a different sense of humour. Much of that is provided by Morley, who’s a gas as Louis, proud of his utter cynicism about human motives and regal duty, and delighted by his own wiliness, but able to gives shows of monarchical gravitas when called for. And sometimes it is called for, turning the other cheek to De Creville’s insults and holding back his generals with assurances that he doesn’t doubt their loyalty, or, later, when he has to face up to one of his rasher promises: “In the last resort, Master Oliver, when all is lost and there is nowhere to turn, nothing else to do, nothing, why then a king keeps his promise.” Similarly sardonic is George Cole as Hayraddin, a gypsy from a clan of professional spies. He becomes friends with Quentin after the Scotsman cuts down his hanged brother’s body, explaining that on this occasion his brother was working for Burgundy and he was for Louis. Hayraddin keeps on Quentin’s heels, aiding him in his efforts in spite of his own glumly self-knowing admission, “I’m a coward.” He frets over divided loyalties when he realises Quentin is to be the victim of Louis’ double-cross, nervously watching as De La Marck’s men mass for attack. Trying to talk through his conundrum with an irritated and clueless Quentin, he wonders how he can obey his sense of honour when he’s not supposed to have one, before realising that as a mercenary he holds money honourable, and so only has to return Louis his pay-off, which allows him at last to tell Quentin he’s about to be murdered.
The film’s concept of Durward as a classical hero rendered a faintly foolish figure by dint of his superb but anachronistic adherence to his role is an unexpectedly modern idea, anticipating, say, Richard Lester’s anti-swashbucklers like Royal Flash (1975), although in Lester’s films the satire derives more from the hero’s incapacity to live up to heroic image. Here, rather, the humour rather predicts Lester’s Superman movies. There’s also seeds planted here for the likes of The Princess Bride (1987) in making mirth of classic Romances whilst also paying heed to their beauties: indeed the film’s low reputation and failure in its time might partly derive from this unexpected, ahead-of-its-time quality. Words usually wielded as praise in familiar genre fiction are constantly used as putdowns by characters here: “Why do you have to be so brave?” Hayraddin questions his friend repeatedly in profound anxiety, whilst Louis furiously barks, after Quentin’s competence spoils his plots, “This is what I get for trusting an honest man!” Taylor is surprisingly strong in inhabiting the part of a perfect hero who becomes aware that he’s a little ridiculous. Isabelle’s handmaiden reminisces about the good old days of the jousts: “What station we ladies held – what magnificent slaughters were held in our honour.”
Kendall, who died tragically young just four years later, was best-known in her brief career as a gifted comic actress. Playing a much more typical kind of heroine than usual, Kendall nonetheless makes Isabelle a rare gem. She’s good-looking enough to pass as a great historical beauty and talented as a dramatic actress enough to play the ardent, proto-modern woman resisting being reduced to chattel by overlords convincingly. Kendall nonetheless playfully invests the part with hints of eccentric zest and pluck, breathily suggesting almost spontaneous orgasm when she first claps eyes on Quentin’s chiselled face, contending with Charles’ bullying with nerve and retorting to her handmaiden’s romanticisation of the past with sarcastic theories, and leaping into action when the moment demands it, jabbing pitchforks into the backsides of De La Marck’s men and scrambling over a rooftop to provide rather more help to Quentin in battle than Hayraddin can. Her and Quentin’s inevitable romance is complicated by his excessively honourable attempts to obey the various oaths he takes in the course of his mission. She tries to run away from him as he escorts her to a safe-haven as the contradictions pile up, only for him to catch her in a striking long shot where they race across a wheat field and then fall amidst the stalks, where ardour overtakes them both.
What Quentin Durward lacks is a story as strong as Ivanhoe or style as unabashed as The Crimson Pirate, leaving it perched between the two poles. The film’s middle third lacks action and takes too long developing Quentin and Isabelle’s romance, repeating the same motifs of Quentin’s self-sabotaging silence on his motives and Isabelle’s frustrated suspicion once too often. Thorpe was a smooth visual storyteller but not a greatly imaginative one: the Technicolor is mostly merely functional, whilst many of the widescreen compositions are over-lit and lack depth of detail, often letting scenes settle in blandly theatrical medium shots or shot-reverse-shot actor exchanges. But Thorpe’s know-how counts when the time for action does arrive. The bursts of derring-do that dot the film, usually pitting Quentin against De La Marck’s men, are interesting as Thorpe and his stuntmen make use of the physical limitations and inventive potential imposed by setting to create fight scenes, like having Durward leap from the stall to stall in a barn trying to keep out of reach of his enemies’ weapons, dancing on narrow beams, and using a covered bridge as a perfect narrowing funnel point to single-handedly take on De La Marque’s force (“How many are you?” De La Marque calls to him; “How many do you want?” Quentin retorts).
Aptly, the villains are played straight, if with a dash of camp excess. De La Marque and his crew of villains are clad, in amusing, semi-anachronistic manner, in black leather and armour that makes them seem like a crowd of medieval biker bandits. Lamont hams it up happily, purring villain dialogue in his inimitably leonine voice and ordering his men “I want to see her!” when they have Isabelle captive, whereupon they strip her down to her slip. Eric Pohlmann plays De La Marque’s major henchman, Gluckmeister, who tries to corner and skewer Quentin with a red-hot metal pole, and who expires when ambushed by Quentin, who hisses, “Stand, pig!” before skewering him. Best of all is the climax, where humour is quelled and the action gets serious. This sees Quentin and De La Marque fighting it out in the blazing, collapsing castle of the Bishop of Liege, which De La Marck has captured in hunting Isabelle. The two combatants duel in a stairwell where the stairs have burned out and collapsed, and they are forced to fight aerially, dangling from the pull-chords of a battery of bells, every swing and lunge accompanied by the clanging of cast bronze. This sequence could represent the missing link between the ingenious slapstick action of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and the conceptual élan of Yuen Woo-Ping. Thorpe ends the scene on a raw and impressive note, too, as De La Marck finishes up caught in the ropes and strangles accidentally to death, whereupon Quentin swings in to claim his head with big dagger, and Thorpe fades out on Isabelle’s shocked reaction and scream. That head proves useful, however, as it tumbles across the floor to the bemusement of a coterie of aristocrats, letting Louis off the hook Charles has tried to hang him on with Quentin’s unwitting help, and true love gets to run away thanks to another ruse of the king that leaves off on a laugh. All in all it’s a smart and classy matinee frolic.
