Le serment du chevalier noir

Ah the swords and shields movie, a once thriving genre of film from yore where big bucks was thrown at the productions, and spectacle was unleashed. There were one or two exceptions, mind...

Directed by Tay Garnett, produced by Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli and starring Alan Ladd, Peter Cushing and a whole host of British thespians lining up for some costume shenanigans. Story is a reworking of Arthurian England, with Ladd as a brave blacksmith who reinvents himself as the Black Knight to foil a dastard plan to overthrow King Arthur, and of course to impress the Lady Linet (Patricia Medina) who he has the major hots for. Sword play, fights, swinging about, jousts and Royal machinations do follow.

In the context of its budget it's hardly the awful stinker some have lined up to proclaim it as. Oh it definitely has problems, not the least that Ladd is badly miscast and Medina just isn't good enough, but there's a great sense of fun about the whole thing. One only has to look at Cushing's performance as the villainous Sir Palamides, he's having a great old time of it prancing about in tights and smothered in so much make-up he looks like a Satsuma! If you can get into Cushing's mindset then there's fun to be had here, intentionally or otherwise!

It's very colourful, costuming is impressive and with Garnett the wise old pro not wasting any chance for an action scene - or to encourage his male cast members into macho posturing - it's never dull. True, the editing is shoddy, the script (Alec Coppel) poor and some of the choreography is amateurish, but this is medieval malarkey 101. A film for the forgiving genre fan whose after a simple hour and half of robust swordery and chastity belt tamperings. 6/10

Someone actually said this, in an outburst of sophomoric exuberance during the Trial By Movie called "The Black Knight". This picture is shot through with banal dialogue and is typical of what you can purchase on the cheap in Hollywood. The alternative is to hire a screenwriter.

It is a comic book movie about coming of age to win a fair lady's heart, but suppose you are pretty old to start with? Alan Ladd, who was so handsome and vital in "Shane", looks lined and puffy here as a blacksmith trying to woo Patricia Medina, who is above his station. But he is undeterred, and sets out to 'prove himself'. The movie is riddled with two-dimensional characters and situations full of contrivances, and if you are older than 14 this picture is probably not for you.

The star rating is in the heading. The website no longer prints mine.

I liked it only because I fancy swords and medieval armor. However, you're not going to learn anything factual nor fascinating about medieval combat here unlike in Robert Taylor's Ivanhoe or Knights of the Round Table.

The character portrayed by Alan Ladd wears an abbreviated armor eschewing the greaves and other gear to protect the legs and arms. Save for the breastplate and chain mail (short sleeved at that!), there is little to suggest that he wears authentic knightly armor. Even his helmet covers only the top of his face (no doubt to display his handsome features.) Robocop is the same way. The reason for the light armor becomes apparent when Ladd performs acrobatics in combat unlikely to have been part of a knight's dueling or battle paces. Robert Wagner in Prince Valiant does similar things.

The heroic Black Knight is actually a commoner and thus barred from bearing knightly arms and so has to keep his identity secret.

The villains are a Saracen knight (Peter Cushing) allied with Cornishmen. Why the people of Cornwall who are as British as the English? Beats me.

Cushing gives a luscious performance as a baddie. His quip after humiliating the blacksmith Alan Ladd before his lady love (Patricia Medina) is memorable. After failing to egg the meek Alan Ladd into fighting him, he turns to Patricia saying: "Please pardon this shameful exhibition."

The photography and location shots are excellent.

Having your wife as your agent can carry some advantages I'm sure, but when Sue Carol Ladd made a deal with Warwick Pictures in the United Kingdom for her husband to star, she did not advance his career. In fact this last one, The Black Knight, might have sunk it.

The biggest mistake Alan Ladd and his wife made was leaving Paramount before Shane was released to critical and popular success. Who knows what might have happened had he stayed and the Paramount publicity machine cranked up at Oscar time for him.

The Black Knight was the third film of three that Ladd did for Warwick that were released by Columbia in America. The first one, The Red Beret was a World War II story and Ladd was a Canadian to explain his non-British accent. The second, Hell Below Zero, was a modern story set on a whaling ship and was not bad and he played an American.

But Ladd had no business in The Black Knight, a tale set in the days of King Arthur. Peter Cushing as Sir Palimedes, a knight who's in the Mordred vein, is plotting with Patrick Troughton playing King Mark of Cornwall to overthrow Arthur and return the isle of Britain to the Druid religion.

Ladd's a blacksmith, hopelessly in love with Lady Patricia Medina whose father he is in service to. Upward mobility isn't the rule in those days, but it can be done as Ladd's friend and mentor Andre Morrell says. Go into knight training and incidentally find out what's behind all these Viking raids were having.

Poor Alan Ladd just doesn't have the requisite image for dueling. Twenty years earlier Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. could have handled the role with ease. But Alan Ladd was never meant to be buckling swashes. Lines that sounded natural coming from Errol Flynn sound ridiculous from Ladd.

Director Tay Garnett handles the battle sequences real nice and the rest of the British cast look like they know what they're doing.

At least this was not the worst film Alan Ladd ever did. That was awaiting him in Duel of the Champions.

In my opinion, the finest cinematic renditions of the Arthurian legends have all been revisionist in nature – Robert Bresson’s ascetic LANCELOT DU LAC (1974), the uproarious MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1974) and John Boorman’s visceral Excalibur (1981) – but, for an entire generation of youngsters during the 1950s and 1960s (that to which my father belongs to be exact), the idealized, heroic Hollywood version of Camelot, its sovereign and inhabitants was the only one there was. In fact, they were spoilt for choice when it comes to depictions of pageantry in those days with Mel Ferrer, Brian Aherne (twice) and Richard Harris being among those who assuming on film the role of King Arthur.

In this modest, fairly routine but equally enjoyable British production, it is Anthony Bushell who gets to play the ruler of Camelot but the actor’s relative anonymity implies (correctly as it turns out) that his role in the narrative is merely a peripheral one. In fact, the leading man here is diminutive Hollywood star Alan Ladd: curiously cast as a taciturn English blacksmith with ideas above his station (generally directed towards aristocratic Patricia Medina), he is wrongly accused of both treason (by duplicitous Saracen knight Peter Cushing) and of cowardice (by Medina herself, after a Viking attack on her castle leaves her mother dead and father, played by Harry Andrews, half-crazed with grief)! However, with the help of a prescient knight (Andre' Morell) and after adopting the titular disguise, our commoner hero saves the day by routing the villains (who also include a dastardly Scottish royal – portrayed by yet another future Hammer horror stalwart Patrick Troughton, as well as Cushing’s laughing, would-be deaf-mute giant stooge), earning himself an official knighthood and, it goes without saying, Medina’s hand in marriage. Incidentally, the tale is set off by a ballad sung in a brief prologue by a minstrel (Elton Hayes) approaching a castle but, unexpectedly enough, rather than featuring in the upcoming narrative (as a singing squire or something), he quickly vanishes never to be seen or heard from again!

Apart from the film’s unsurprising reliance on cliché, it also contains elements of camp (particularly a Pagan rite being performed at Stonehenge and the cumbersome insignias worn on their helmets by the various knights) and leads up to a curiously clumsy climax (with an ostensibly unnoticed Ladd conspicuously overhearing the scheming Troughton and Cushing from a secret passage leading right behind the former’s throne; Ladd seemingly taken aback by the aforementioned giant falling to his death in spite of himself from the castle rooftop, not to mention Cushing apparently tripping in his own armor when turning up for the final showdown with the hero)! Actually, this only increases the film’s fun factor and, over fifty years later, one can still understand how this stuff was eagerly lapped up by thrill-seeking schoolboys during their weekly matinees. Incidentally, given Cushing’s reputation as a horror star, it may come as a surprise to some that he appeared in numerous costumers over the years – including THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1939), Alexander THE GREAT (1956), JOHN PAUL JONES (1959), SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST (1960), THE HELLFIRE CLUB (1961), FURY AT SMUGGLER’S BAY (1961), CAPTAIN CLEGG (1963) and SWORD OF THE VALIANT (1984)!

For what it’s worth, the screenplay involves some notable names – Alec Coppel, future director Bryan Forbes and film noir star Dennis O’Keefe(!) – and its plot of King Arthur vs. The Vikings would come in handy once more that same year in the equally inauthentic but even more popular PRINCE VALIANT. Other distinguished crew members include composer John Addison, cinematographer John Wilcox, art director Vetchinsky and producers Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli(!) – this was actually the latter’s third and last picture with Ladd following THE RED BERET (1953) and HELL BELOW ZERO (1954). By the way, THE BLACK KNIGHT itself eventually got remade by Nathan Juran as SIEGE OF THE SAXONS (1963)!