Word: swordplay
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cesare's Swordplay. Lucrezia grieved over such quick and bloody changes. (Says Biographer Bellonci: "She had al ways been contented with her husbands as long as she was able to keep them.") Still, although she tried desperately to save the life of her second husband, she forgave her brother for this and other crimes...
...balancing the saintly preaching of Dean Jagger (as Justus) and Michael Rennie (as Peter) with the muscular Christianity of Burton and Mature. There is a minimum of the sex and sadism that usually characterize Hollywood's explorations of Holy Writ. The CinemaScope screen is handsomely utilized for swordplay, torture chambers and a thundering chase sequence as well as for dramatic shots of the Way of the Cross and Christ's entrance into Jerusalem the week before the Crucifixion. Alfred Newman's music is especially effective in the Palm Sunday hymn and in a ballad charmingly sung...
...conniving brother Michael (Robert Douglas), who has designs on the throne, Rassendyll obligingly shaves off his mustache, rivets a monocle into his profile and steps into the royal breach. After much leaping from balconies, swinging from trees, swimming across moats, charging across drawbridges and assorted gunplay and swordplay, Michael gets his comeuppance, the king is restored to his throne, and Rassendyll returns to England, enthroned in the heart of beautiful Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr...
Scaramouche (M-G-M), based on Rafael Sabatini's costume-adventure yarn of pre-revolutionary France, combines spirited swordplay with a somewhat sluggish screenplay. Scaramouche (Stewart Granger) is an aristocrat who is bent on avenging the murder of his friend by malevolent Monarchist Mel Ferrer. Not only does Granger prove more than worthy of Master Swordsman Ferrer's steel; he also proves to be quite a gay blade by hiding out from the authorities with a troupe of traveling players. By the fadeout, Granger has found that Ferrer is really his halfbrother, and, in a happier twist...
Most of the entertainment, however, is at the director's expense. The swordplay is delightfully amateurish, and Miss O'Hara's lovemaking is delightfully deadpan. Most delightful of all, however, are the missed cues. At one point, Athos' daughter descends a staircase, stops and waits expectantly for the swordsmen who were supposed to surprise...