The Battle of Sea Demons

It remains a mystery to me that 1942's The Black Swan exists and that people don't seem especially interested in it. I watched it again a few days ago. For my money, it's a better movie than Errol Flynn's pirate movies. Certainly it surpasses The Crimson Pirate or any number of other pirate films that get talked about.

I love how the beginning of the movie feels like the climax to another movie we didn't get to see. We catch up with Tyrone Power, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, and a host of ravenous buccaneers storming a Spanish fortress. First Power is caught and put on the rack, then the tables are turned and the Spanish governor gets a stretch. And then the daughter of an English diplomat turns out to be there and it's Maureen O'Hara.

Power as the pirate Jamie Waring without hesitation pins her to a wall and tries to kiss her. This follows from a scene where he and Sanders, as the pirate Billy Leech, got drunk over the prone bodies of two bound girls in their shifts. Why does Jamie become the hero and Leech the villain? Tyrone Power is handsomer? It's as good an answer as any for this totally amoral film.

How did this movie get made in the era of the Hays Code? I really don't get it.

It's perfectly cast, too. In addition to the four excellent folks I mentioned, Laird Cregor gives us the best screen depiction of the famous pirate Henry Morgan.

As in real life, he's appointed to the governorship of Jamaica. In the film we see he's plagued by petty backstabbing from government men who led more respectable lives. I wonder if the film was sold as some kind of precursor to the American revolution. Maybe pirates were just generally presumed to be exceptions to the rules.

Special effects and cinematography are top notch in this film, too.

A Low Bar for a Fox

I've never seen an American adventure film from the 40s feature more wonderful locations than 1949's Prince of Foxes. Set at the beginning of the 16th century, the filmmakers made extensive use of many structures that had endured for centuries. It's a shame the screenplay is one of the most vapid pieces of dreck I've come across, its blunt morality making it seem like it was entirely a product of the Hays code. But gods, the visuals in this film almost make up for it. The locations are matched by intricate costumes and interiors. The film also has some talented actors and a few untalented but attractive actors.

The film stars Tyrone Power as a man named Orsini, an agent of political machinations for Cesare Borgia who's played by Orson Welles. Welles elevates the whole film whenever he's on screen, managing to make his insipid, stock villain dialogue sound almost genuinely devious. Power, though, has nothing to compensate for his thoroughly unimpressive character.

Basil Rathbone said Tyrone Power was a better swordsman than Errol Flynn, and Prince of Foxes has one decent sword fight, but Power has nothing on Flynn's charisma. He's interesting in a few films--Nightmare Alley actually kind of makes use of his typewriter guilelessness. But he's no prince of foxes, he's scarcely a page. As the scheming courtier Orsini he's about as convincing as Natalie Portman would be playing Stalin.

Things are made worse when he's turned from the dark side apparently because somehow people are only mentioning to him for the first time that it's wrong to do wrong. He stops in for a clandestine visit to his peasant mother who right in front of him prays to the Madonna for him to be punished for associating with Borgia. Orsini looks terrified and flees before his mother's righteousness.

Later, he's sent on a mission to murder an old count (Felix Aylmer) and marry his young wife, Camilla (Wanda Hendrix), who already seems to be falling for Orsini.

But through the power of their virtue alone the two of them have Orsini figured and constantly preach to him, telling him he'll be nothing unless he turns from his evil ways. The dumb oaf evidently finds this persuasive. Some fox.

Then there's this dopey Carnival scene where Orsini and his cohort are transported with delight by confetti and puppets. Watching the crafty fox giggling like a baby I had to wonder just what the hell the filmmakers thought they were doing.

Everett Sloane--Bernstein from Citizen Kane--has a big role as an assassin who becomes Orsini's assistant. Orsini and others gratuitously comment on how his facial features exemplify evil. Sloane must have been a hell of a good sport. Anyway, he gives a decent performance, he and Orson Welles make this film go down a lot easier. But gods, the locations. I don't think there were any matte paintings used. The smoke coming from this castle is there just as a backdrop for Camilla's melancholy wanderings in the garden.