THE MARK OF ZORRO
*** out of *****
Reviewed by David Cormack

Genres
Action
Adventure
Western

1940
Directed by
Rouben Mamoulian
Written by
Johnston McCulley (novel The Curse of Capistrano)
John Taintor Foote
Garrett Fort (adaptation)
Bess Meredyth (adaptation)
Cast
Tyrone Power .... Don Diego Vega/Zorro
Linda Darnell .... Lolita Quintero
Basil Rathbone .... Captain Esteban Pasquale
Gale Sondergaard .... Inez Quintero
Eugene Pallette .... Fray Felipe
J. Edward Bromberg .... Don Luis Quintero
Montagu Love .... Don Alejandro Vega
Janet Beecher .... Señora Isabella Vega

So starts The Mark of Zorro. But immediately it presents a problem, if I'm going to see killing I'm more than happy for it to be fine but 'fashionable'? I dunno if it's just me but I was seeing homoerotic subtext like this all throughout this movie, from the priest grabbing Don de Vega's (Tyrone Power) arm and commenting on "what a big muscle he has" through to that campy lilt that all movies of this age seemed to possess.

Now this is not the Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones , Anthony Hopkins tripe released in 1998, oh no no, this 1940 edition had crowd pulling stars such as Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone and the effervescent Tyrone Power (has there ever been a more unlikely real name?) as our hero Zorro.

The gist of the story of Zorro is pretty well known but to those of you who don't here goes: A man returns to his hometown of Los Angeles from Spain only to find that his old man isn't the mayor anymore and that a "villainous dictator" has taken over. On the surface he appears not to care but by night he is…Zorro! Masked Avenger.

The first thing this reviewer likes to …err… review is the positive things from any movie.

The swordplay, I have to admit that I have a soft spot for all films swashbuckling and this film buckled a lot of swash. The final showdown is something spectacular which quite frankly didn't go on long enough. There was enough excitement in this fight to sustain another few minutes but sadly this was the only real instance of good quality fencing.

Linda Darnell was superb. She played the love-interest of Zorro and not only was she beautiful but she was by far and away the best actor in this film. Her performance as the young niece confused by this potential suitor whilst at the same time loving his alter-ego was startling and made all the more remarkable by the fact she was 17. 17! I could never star opposite an actor such as Tyrone Power at that age AND manage to upstage him. Crikey. Pity she died at 42 in a house fire.

The idea this film was trying to convey was also nice, that if you don't like or respect authority then you should don a camp outfit over the top of your camper tight blue pants and rob the tax collectors. Who hasn't wanted to rob the tax department wearing a ninja turtle's mask? But the message was somewhat lost in the translation and now I shall move on…

Have you ever been playing a video game, a first person shooter, and you're firing from afar into a group of enemies and you kill one whilst the others just stand around and don't react at all to your barrage of bullets? That's a problem in this film; the opposition is just so bloody stupid. The main bad guy is a complete caricature of your Spanish dictator right down to his matador type outfits and it's this sort of thing that worries me, I know that the 1940s weren't too concerned with being politically correct but I wondered if this film was being a bit racist. Example: Cut scene to a dusty village, it's mid-afternoon so in that heat people are all taking a siesta, the camera pans round and the Mexican looking folk are just sitting all over the village with their heads down and the giant sombreros covering their heads. Do we really need this sort of stereotype perpetuated? It's like having a German with a white moustache and monocle come into a prison and saying "ve have vays of making you tock". It adds nothing to the film other than unintentional humor.

Another negative for me was the colorization of the film. I'm always very skeptical to hear that a film has been colorized for the very reason that I can never be sure that the original director of the film wanted his piece colorized. And how do we know that they got the right colors? Imagine if in 60 years someone goes back and completely colors in Sin City (2005) or Schindler's List (1993). It immediately makes me distrust the film and particularly where they seemed to live by the mantra "if in doubt, go with pastels".

But the worst, absolute worst part of this film was Tyrone Power's moustache. It was a yucky little pencil thin dirty sanchez of a moustache, and just because I know you're all interested in the titillation of it, here's my favorite bit of homoerotic subtext:

David Cormack's reviews also appear on DVD Compare, where they include details of the DVD release. For this review click here.

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