• Source: Swashbuckler film

A swashbuckler film is characterised by swordfighting and adventurous heroic characters, known as swashbucklers. While morality is typically clear-cut, heroes and villains alike often, but not always, follow a code of honor. Some swashbuckler films have romantic elements, most frequently a damsel in distress. Both real and fictional historical events often feature prominently in the plot.




History


Right from the advent of cinema, the silent era was packed with swashbucklers. The most famous of those were the films of Douglas Fairbanks, such as The Mark of Zorro (1920), which defined the genre. The stories came from romantic costume novels, particularly those of Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini. Stirring music was also an important part of the formula. The three great cycles of swashbuckler films were the Douglas Fairbanks period from 1920 to 1929; the Errol Flynn period from 1935 to 1941; and a period in the 1950s heralded by films such as Ivanhoe (1952) and The Master of Ballantrae (1953), and the popularity of the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955–1959). Richard Lester's Dumas adaptations revived the genre in the 1970s.




Swashbucklers



The term "swashbuckler" originates from boisterous fighters who carried a sword and buckler (a small shield). "Swashbuckler" was a putdown, used to indicate a poor swordsman who covered his lack of skill with noise, bragging, and clamour. Novels, and then Hollywood, altered the word's connotation to make the swashbuckler the hero of the plotline.
Jeffrey Richards describes the genre as very stylized. The hero is one who "maintains a decent standard of behavior, fights for King and Country, believes in truth and justice, defends the honour of lady". Though these can be regarded as the values of a knight, the setting may fall anywhere between the 11th and 19th centuries.




Fencing



Fencing is an essential element of the genre, and a dramatic duel is invariably a pivotal part of the storyline. Famous fencing instructors came from the ranks of successful competitors, and included Henry Uyttenhove, Fred Cavens, Jean Heremans, Ralph Faulkner, and Bob Anderson.




Musical scores


Erich Wolfgang Korngold won the 1938 Academy Award for his score to The Adventures of Robin Hood. The 1935 Captain Blood was nominated for Music (Scoring); in 1940 The Sea Hawk was nominated for best Original Score. Korngold was known for his late Romantic compositional style and assigning each character his or her own leitmotif.
Alfred Newman wrote the scores for: The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), the 1940 version of The Mark of Zorro, and the 1942 The Black Swan (nominated for Best Original Score). The 1940 film of The Mark of Zorro was nominated for an Academy Award for the Best Original Score.
Dimitri Tiomkin scored Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). According to film historian David Wallace, "His trademarks, huge, noisy cues, propulsive adventure themes that seemingly employed every brass instrument ever invented, and melting, emotionally wrought melodies accompanying romantic scenes also became the stock-in trade of just about every film composer since."
Hans Zimmer scored the Pirates of the Caribbean series, reinventing the swashbuckler musical style.




Television


Television followed the films.
British television production in the genre was prolific, headlined by The Adventures of Robin Hood, which produced 143 episodes by 1959 and became an outstanding success both in the United Kingdom and the United States. Other popular series included The Buccaneers (1956–1957), The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–1957), Sword of Freedom (1958), The Adventures of William Tell (1958), The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (ITV, 1956), ITC's The Count of Monte Cristo (ITV, 1956), and George King's The Gay Cavalier (ITV, 1957), Quentin Durward (Studio Canal, 1971), Robin of Sherwood (ITV, 1984–1986), and Sharpe (ITV, since 1993).
American television produced two series of Zorro (1957 and 1990). Following the film The Mask of Zorro (1998), a television series about a female swashbuckler, Queen of Swords, aired in 2000.
The Spanish television series Águila Roja (Red Eagle), aired from 2009 to 2016, is an example of the swashbuckler genre.
Italian and German televisions produced several series of Sandokan.




Notable films






Notable actors and actresses






See also



List of adventure films
List of action films
List of genres
Combat in film
Samurai film




References






External links



Swashbuckling TV at Screen Online
Maureen O'Hara - Cinema Swashbucklers
• Source: Swashbuckler (film)

Swashbuckler is a 1976 American romantic adventure film. The film is based on the story "The Scarlet Buccaneer", written by Paul Wheeler and adapted for the screen by Jeffrey Bloom. It was directed by James Goldstone and was rated PG.
The film was released in the UK as The Scarlet Buccaneer.
The film is set in 1718 Jamaica. The acting governor of the island has imprisoned the island's primary judge, and persecuted the judge's family. The judge's daughter hires a pirate captain to assassinate the governor on her behalf. In the process, the captain falls in love with her.




Plot


In Jamaica in 1718, a band of pirates led by Captain "Red" Ned Lynch oppose the greedy acting Governor, the evil Lord Durant. Durant has ruthlessly imprisoned his Lord High Justice (taking over the role himself) and mercilessly evicted the judge's wife and daughter. The daughter, Jane Barnet, attempts to assassinate Durant by paying Lynch to ambush him at the port.
The ambush fails, resulting in Jane and three of Lynch's crew being captured and sentenced to death. The other prisoners, including the judge, are also awaiting execution.
Lynch returns to the island and joins forces with the local inhabitants to overthrow the military forces and return everything Durant has stolen to its rightful owners. In the process Durant is killed by Lynch and all the prisoners are released.
Lynch and Jane eventually fall in love.




Cast






Production


Pirate films had gone out of fashion with major Hollywood studios since the 1950s, due in part to their high cost. The success of The Three Musketeers (1973) showed that there was still an appetite for swashbucklers, so original producer Eliot Kastner prepared a pirate script where most of the action took place on shore.
"It was prepared to avoid all the hazards of filming on water and it could have been inexpensively made", said co-producer Jennings Lang. "But we decided that it would be cheating the public to do a pirate movie without boats, that would not be using the basic material."
The film was shot in Mexico and on the galleon Golden Hinde, a replica of the Golden Hind captained by English privateer, Francis Drake from 1577 to 1580, which had been moored in San Francisco harbor after a five-month journey to California from England. According to the Special Feature section of the DVD, it was the only pirate movie filmed aboard an actual ship of that era.
"I just hope the audience doesn't think its too small", said Goldstone during production about the ship. "All those Errol Flynn movies—the captain's table was 17 feet long. There are parts of our ship that aren't even that wide."
Anjelica Huston was cast for her role over Martine Beswicke and Barbara Steele. Robert Morgan, a stuntman who lost his leg making How the West Was Won (1963), played a one-legged pirate.
Robert Shaw said during filming:

I'm underplaying this part when all the others are overplaying. I'm trying to be real but I'm also trying to find some sort of contemporary style. It's a mix between 1976 and what we used to call panache. It's as if you were to do Gary Cooper in '76 – I stand apart and alone. In Jaws I was conscious of overplaying. I'm not ashamed of it. I had to bring those American guys up to a certain pitch of energy. But here I'm taking it down and trying to go in the other way. Trying to be real in an unreal situation. I hate all this action, I loathe it. What am I doing running around like this? I'm better off sitting down, playing a scene like I'm talking to you. What I know about life is a fair bit, but it is not contained in sword fights or running up and down the masts of a ship or taking a punch. It's doubly hard because I'm English. English actors are always being asked to play princes or generals or pirate captains. I never get to sit in a booth with a girl and have a conversation.
Geneveive Bujold made the film under her contract with Universal. She said later she did not regret making the film because "Robert Shaw is a man worth knowing."
Director James Goldstone stated during filming:

We're not doing a boffo comedy. We are not making fun of ourselves. One of the cardinal rules here is that every actor really believe what he is doing could actually happen... I hope to evoke all those feelings that audiences felt when they first saw Errol Flynn's movies, but at the same time I realise that if you saw an actual Errol Flynn movie today, marvelous as they were, you'd laugh. My job here is to keep the energy up, the motion moving forward, to maintain a level of joy.
Costume director Burton Miller said:

Instead of researching the period, I took on producer Jennings Lang's challenge for a non-historical approach and started walking along the [Sunset] Strip. I took what groupies and rock stars wear today and took it back 200 years... The film offered more avenues for self expression than anything I'd ever done before. Universal were very generous [with the costume budget].
Geneviève Bujold said it took two days to shoot her nude swimming scene.




Release


The working title for the film was Swashbuckler, which was changed during production to The Blarney Cock. "We want to avoid the movie being considered a kid's picture", said Lang. "We wanted a title that is arresting to adults as well as kids. This ship in the movie is called "The Blarney Cock", so we decided to make use of that name as the title."
Before release, however, Universal had a change of heart about the suggestive nature of the title and it was reverted to Swashbuckler.




Reception


The film fared poorly at the box office and was described as an "expensive flop". In Leonard Maltin's annual publication of movie ratings, the film is rated as a "BOMB".




Novelization


Bensen, D. R. (1976). Swashbuckler. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0553102451. OCLC 0553102451.




References






External links


Swashbuckler at IMDb
Swashbuckler at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
Swashbuckler at the TCM Movie Database
Swashbuckler at Letterboxd
Swashbuckler at Rotten Tomatoes

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