A Film Canon

The Adventures Of Robin Hood is the quintessential swashbuckling film, partly because it provides the most elegant elaboration of the swashbuckler's true domain; the periphery of a nation, whether figured geographically, as its imperial fringe, or morally, as the recognition that its administrative shortcomings belie its potential grandeur. In this case, twelfth-century England finds itself literally equated with these moral and geographical peripheries, as the trial and imprisonment of its moral guardian - Richard I - on the continent produces the dislocating regency of John, who refuses to make any distinction between Saxon and Norman - that is, between centre and periphery of the Angevin Empire - in his reign of terror. This produces the quintessential swashbuckler - Robin Hood - or, more accurately, the quintessential elaboration of Errol Flynn's acrobatic eloquence, which moves beyond the sword-fighting of Captain Blood to take archery as its epitome, imbuing all his actions with the omniscience and irreverence of wind, and suggesting that there is no target that his arrow cannot - and will not - consider. Hence his tendency to camouflage the outlaws as an unusually mobile section of Sherwood Forest, which also serves Curtiz's Technicolour vision by ensuring that they are decked out in the greens, browns and greys that are least conducive to that technological innovation, while the lurid reds, purples and blues of John's court - and, above all, its candles and fireplaces - sculpt colour with a luxurious novelty that nicely evokes the starving, hallucinatory gaze of the local populace. That said, Technicolour is just as striking for its ability to refine depth and movement, as evinced in Curtiz's return to the radiant, crystalline stream that environs Sherwood Forest, and provides a cipher for Flynn's hyper-fluidity, as well as his notoriously persuasive eyes.