The Adventures of Robin Hood

365 Films

Entry #102

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley

In my flippant, incredibly irritating way, I sometimes have the tendency to speak rather disparagingly about studio filmmaking.  I scoff at movies made by committee and the blatant homogenization that results from it.  It’s all a bit silly when you look at the entirety of film history, for there are a wide of variety of wonderful movies borne precisely out of this process.  Warner Bros’ The Adventures of Robin Hood is a sterling example of such a film.  Splendidly shot, featuring an incomparable score, cleverly written, and utilizing a cast that is absolutely perfect, Robin Hood is certainly one the greatest “escapist” movies of all time.  It’s such an absolute joy to be swept up in, that you can’t help but sit back and admire the collective creative genius that went into its conception.  Assembled from the usual suspects of Warner Bros stock company in the mid to late 30’s and written to a polish by a handful of screenwriters, Robin is certainly a Warner Bros’ picture more so than any individual director.  It doesn’t hurt that one of its directors, Michael Curtiz, would go on to direct the immortal Casablanca, but even he was only a replacement on Robin Hood as this was a film that was going to be willed into existence by its studio no matter what road blocks were placed in front of it.  These days, it’s incredibly difficult to have sympathy for so-called “runaway” studio productions.  Tales begin to emerge of skyrocketing budgets and recklessly irresponsible behavior by all concerned parties that movies of the sort are virtually written off before they can be fairly judged.  Robin Hood was a very early example of that kind of production and while it’s then-astronomical two-million dollar budget would be considered a micro indie by today’s standards (I think that’s what Zach Braff recently proposed for his kickstarter fund), it is also hard to imagine Robin Hood without the costumes, sets, and dynamic action sequences.  That’s not to suggest that the astonishing physical grace of Errol Flynn was something that could be bought, but sometimes a plan just comes together.  Simply put, Robin Hood is the best possible final result of the “throw as much money at the screen as possible” studio mentality, and going into it’s seventy-fifth year, it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.