A meeting of two Aussie acting legends – Errol Flynn and Peter Finch, roisterers, lady-killers, Jamaican residents, heart attack victims. It’s set during the Hundred Years War when Edward III is trying to make the peace – which means the French recognising English sovereignty over Aquitaine. Finch is a French nobleman understandably reluctant to this, even though he’s supposed to be the baddy. Indeed, when Finch vows at the beginning of the film to continue the fight against the occupying invaders, you think that Finch is closer to Robin Hood than Errol, who plays the Black Prince.
The film tries to make up for it by having the French peasants complain to the English that the French nobles are taxing them… but it just doesn’t feel right. You can’t help but be on Finch’s side. It picks up after a bit when Errol gets cut off from his men and is forced to go undercover as the Black Knight – he even befriends Finch; now that’s a situation for a really strong movie, but it’s not really exploited the way it could have been.
This was Errol’s final big screen swashbuckler and looks surprisingly handsome (the film, not Errol). I’d been led to believe his mid 50s films were low budget works but there’s plenty of colour and impressive production values, with plenty of castles, knights on horseback, and fighting, plus Michael Hordern (as Errol’s dad!) and Finch in the support cast. (There’s also later sitcom star Richard O’Sullivan as a whiny noble, a role he also played in Cleopatra and Dangerous Exile).
Errol is too old and portly to play a dashing prince; also, he’s shaved his moustache off, which makes him look even older (though the fact that his character spends a bit of the movie’s running time in black knight get up mean presumably it was more schedule-friendly for him - just like Alan Ladd in The Black Knight). He has a wheezy sword fight with a very young Chris Lee, and kills Finch with an axe. But generally pretty bland stuff.
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