Word: marian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Robin and Marian flirts with serious trouble a couple of times but is saved from lasting damage by a particularly bracing conspiracy of talents. Toward the end of the film, when adversary armies led by Robin and the sheriff face each other across a plain, Robin proposes that instead of both forces clashing, the battle be "settled with champions." The movie is resolved and enhanced in much the same...
Almost everyone involved with Robin and Marian could be a champion. One thinks immediately of the model supporting cast: Richard Harris as Richard Lionheart, Denholm Elliott as Will Scarlett, Ian Holm as King John, Kenneth Haigh as the duplicitous Sir Ranulf. There is also the ravishing cinematography of David Watkin, who makes Sherwood into a forest well suited to legend. Particularly there is Sean Connery's Robin Hood, Nicol Williamson's Little John, Robert Shaw's winter-eyed Sheriff, Audrey Hepburn's Maid Marian-and Richard Lester, a film maker of deft wit and frequent brilliance...
Zest for Buffoonery. James Goldman's sweet-spirited script owes much to his previous The Lion in Winter, although Robin and Marian lacks the lofty airs that marred its predecessor. Marian has taken the veil, but presides over a tiny abbey with worldly animation. She swears with precision and puts up a heated battle when Robin insists on saving her from the sheriffs clutches. She would as soon go to prison, but she has little choice in the matter. Robin slings her over the back of a horse as if she were a saddlebag...
Their romance continues in this fashion, moving from barbed banter to admissions of continued affection. Marian tells Robin her confessions were "the envy of the convent," then reminds him with a pretty sulk, "You never wrote." Says Robin, "I don't know how." Seeing Marian, being back in Sherwood, rekindles Robin's spirits. Age and old scars are forgotten, save in times of extreme stress-as in a sword fight on the castle walls of Nottingham. It is just the sort of escapade that Marian was hoping Robin would abandon...
Robin and Marian is a film that must stand or fall on the strength of its stars. Fortunately, it has two of the best. Connery is a genuine masculine presence, not afraid to be tender. He also has a real zest for buffoonery that flourishes under Lester's considerable encouragement. Audrey Hepburn has not made a movie in seven years. The moment she appears on screen is startling, not for her thorough, gentle command, not even for her beauty, which seems heightened, renewed. It is rather that we are reminded of how long it has been since an actress...