The Mark of Zorro

This is what I can't help but like about the old high seas adventures and swashbuckling romances of the 1930s and '40s. You know, the ones where you can always hear Alfred Newman's bombastic score. The Mask of Zorro opens with a title card saying, "Madrid - when the Spanish Empire encompassed the globe, and young blades were taught the fine and fashionable art of killing…" So what's that, like 18...30? 1840? I guess we'll figure it out. And so we do, of course. But there was an unabashed syrupy-ness about the melodramatic urgency given to these movies.

When Zorro's not prancing around in his little cape eye-mask, he's playing the part of the utterly timid, and more than a touch effeminate, Don Diego Vega. The likelihood that Vega could be the remarkably expert swashbuckler never once dawns on the baddies, largely because Vega is such a stern little prude.

The first big-budget talkie starring the swashbuckling samaritan, Rouben Mamoulian's old-fashioned jaunt was a blockbuster in 1940, and it remains recalled quite warmheartedly by the Silent Generation's moviegoers, and equally the small screen's fascinated beginners among the Baby Boom, as one of the period's very best adventure pictures. One grows accustomed to the movie's qualitative foothold in that time of matinée idols and sword-fighting silver-screen hero worship, and we can concede for that reason. But tolerant filmgoers will stay open for a movie that's considerably chock-a-block with romance, action, duplicity, and courageous bravado, all in an overstated manner that could've only been taken seriously in 1940, and perhaps not one year later.

The nuts and bolts are all here: Don Diego is invited to come home from Madrid to his family in Los Angeles, but upon his reappearance he learns that his father's standing as "alcalde" has been seized by the shameless Don Luis Quintero, a nasty piece of work who's nothing more than a minion to the man enjoying the real supremacy: Captain Esteban Pasquale. As expected, Diego/Zorro means to linger in Los Angeles just long enough to depose the scoundrels, entice a pretty slice of illicit fruit, and bring integrity to his family's native soil. Nothing ground-breaking here, but there's nothing amiss in a straightforward adventure yarn told in the traditional way.

altho Tyrone Power's no slouch. His looks are perfect for he role and he plays the fop wonderfully well:

"Alcalde, I ask for your niece's hand in marriage. A refusal would crush me."

Basil, aside from playing the villain in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and the famous detective in 14 Sherlock Holmes movies, was a master swordsman, and the final duel is breathtakingly fast and furious. He was so good in the role I hated to see him killed!

The theme music by Alfred Newman is appropriately stirring. And Gale Sondergaard is wonderful as the woman you love to hate. 18-year old Linda Darnell is beautiful but quite stiff in the role.

Note: Eugene Pallette, a Robert Newton look & sound-alike, who played the Padre in this, also played a priest, Friar Tuck, in "Robin Hood," also starring Basil. Also, the 1974 TV version with Frank Langella, Ricardo Montalban & Anne Archer, the first Zorro version I ever saw, uses the same theme soundtrack, and the script and dialogue are very similar to the 1940 version. I recommend this TV version as well.

In Madrid, the talented aristocratic military swordsman and rider Diego Vega (Tyrone Power) returns to the Mexican California to reunite with his father, the Alcalde Don Alejandro Vega (Montagu Love), and his mother. When he arrives in Los Angeles, he finds that his father has been replaced by the tyrannous Alcalde Don Luis Quintero (J. Edward Bromberg) that oppresses the people with soaring taxes and violent punishment for those that can not afford and supported by the corrupt Captain Esteban Pasquale (Basil Rathbone) and his soldiers. Don Diego does not disclose his abilities with the sword and disguises pretending that he is a sophisticated fashionable gay, for the heartache of his father. However, when he secretly wears a mask and rides a black horse, he becomes the avenger Zorro that carves his mark for the fearfulness of his enemies.

"The Mark of Zorro" is the best Zorro of the cinema history in a time when the studios were concerned with the screenplay and acting and not CGI and sex scenes. The witty delightful story presents Tyrone Power as a fantastic the weak and fragile Don Diego Vega and the powerful Zorro, with totally different personalities. His ability as swordsman and rider is impressive in a perfect choreography of fights, recalling Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" of two years before. Linda Darnell is so sweet and beautiful that seems to be the inspiration for the title of the novel of Vladimir Nabokov. J. Edward Bromberg and Basil Rathbone are the perfect villains, the first one coward and sleazy and the second arrogant and corrupt. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "A Marca do Zorro" ("The Mark of Zorro")

Tyrone Power - the swashbuckling answer to Errol Flynn - is cast as the agile masked avenger who decides to take up the people's cause in disguise leaving his 'mark' "Z" everywhere, on walls, coach, wooden barrels and human chest...

Power - in a double leading role - is at his best as Zorro, climbing, jumping, riding and fencing, determined to finish with tyranny and oppression by terrorizing, and retrieving taxation funds and by challenging a cunning officer, proving in public his indifference, his ostentation and irony as a perfect pacifist fop in 19th-Century Spanish California, confusing and deceiving his aristocratic father Don Alejandro Vega (Montagu Love), the deposed Alcalde...

The inspired casting (in supporting roles) recalls "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

Linda Darnell is the pretty Lolita, Quintero's charming niece, who loves the mysterious hero and can't tolerate the fop until she is told that they are the image of the same person...

Basil Rathbone, one of the most durable of screen villains who has mastered stage fencing but never won a Swordfight, plays the cruel captain Esteban Pasquale, the Alcalde's military adviser... He is a second-rate soldier of fortune who leads the campaign of frustrating taxation, who considered Diego "a fancy clown" but who suggests a practical plan, an alliance for the good of the state...

J. Edward Bromberg is the cowardly Alcalde, Don Luis Quintero, a corrupted thief, enemy of the people, whose tyranny and avarice are always enforced by the treachery of his iron hand, the rigorous captain Esteban...

Eugene Palette plays the mission 'fat' priest (Father Felipe) who ignores that Diego is the opposing force...

The high point of the picture is the fantastic duel between Power and Rathbone, a masterpiece of screen Swordplay...

Rouben Mamoulian succeeds in making two great stars dance to an unheard music... With a touch of a great filmmaker, Mamoulian mixes harmoniously movement and action, decor and lightning with rage and turmoil, heroism and romance...

Under Alfred Newman's Oscar-Nominated score and despite the unusual absence of Technicolor, the film (the first of the great Tyrone Power swashbucklers ) is great fun, full of vitality and suspense, an exciting, deliciously ironic swashbuckler...

This movie was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and this was basically the only action movie he directed and probably his best film, he made one more movie with Tyrone Power a year later called Blood And Sand and that was pretty bad. This is also one of Power's best movies and much better than Jesse James the year before. Their isn't much to the plot that you need to know like Power coming back from Spain and finding his father thrown out of power by a dictator and the people are starving. His father can't or won't do anything so Power decides to become Zorro. Basil Rathbone is the dictator's top bodyguard and a top swordsman. Linda Darnell is the dictator's daughter who winds up getting married to Power through an arranged marriage. This is much better then the remake in 98 called The Mask Of Zorro and a great movie.