Les Vikings

After reading many of the reviews here, I'd like to remind the younger folk that this is the way movies were, back in the 50's. We didn't mind "weak" (?) Tony Curtis being cast in that role, Ernest Borgnine as Ragnar, etc., all the blood and guts (What? There's more on cable TV today!), the "subservient" (?) women, etc. This was a great, swashbuckling movie, all real, no computer graphics anywhere, trying to portray life as it was in the Viking era. Essentially, a reflection of what we of the mid 20th century expected a Hollywood movie to be. Kudos to the great Kirk Douglas, may he Rest In Peace.

Believe it or not the plot of this film has a basis in fact. There was a Viking leader called Ragnar Lothbrok (Leather-breeches) who was put to death in a snake -not wolf- pit by Aelle, king of Northumbria, at York in the year 865. His son 'Ivar the Boneless' raised a Viking army, invaded Northumbria and killed Aelle.

The film builds on this to include an illegitimate half-brother and rivalry over a beautiful Welsh princess to create a story of rousing, full-blooded action.

The film has a great atmosphere which is hard to put into words. You can almost sense the harshness of the climate in a way that makes you feel you are there. The climatic fight scene between Douglas and Curtis is a good example of this. Brilliantly staged on the roof of a castle overlooking the sea, you hear the whistling of the wind and crashing of waves against the shore below. The photography emphasises this sense of height and space to create one of the best film fights I have ever seen.

There are glaring errors, of course. The Anglo-Saxons never had castles like the one here, or ships of the type used by Princess Morgana: these both date from 500 years later.

I learned all this when (inspired by the film) I studied the Viking era at University. Between you and me, the film was a great deal more fun!

Two Viking half brothers (who are unaware that they are related) fight over Welsh Princess Morgana, who has been captured during a raid in England while en-route to marry the King of Northumbria.

A handsomely mounted historical epic in the old tradition. However, a great deal of effort was made to achieve accuracy in terms of clothes, villages, ships, weapons etc. The stunning Norwegian locations add to the authenticity, and are breathtakingly photographed in Technirama by master cinematographer Jack Cardiff.

Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine all give strong performances, although the characters are hard to like. The level of brutality is quite surprising for a film made in 1958, and the overall atmosphere is one of harshness.

While the film is perhaps not quite in the league of 'Spartacus' or 'El Cid' in terms of epic status, it is admirably authentic, unsentimental and vigorous.

Unknown to both men, warrior Einar and disgraced slave Eric, are in fact half-brothers. As the kingdom of Northumbria becomes ripe for the taking, both men, with a fancy for Princess Morganna, are heading for the revelation right in amongst their bitter rivalry.

Kirk Douglas (Einar) and Tony Curtis (Eric) would both re-team for Spartacus two years after this sword and sandal swasher had hit the screens in 1958. That Spartacus is considerably a better film all told is a given, but The Vikings stands up well as an entertaining precursor to that Thracien slave classic. Based on the novel of the same name written by Edison Marshall, The Vikings makes up for what it lacks in authenticity with sheer gusto enhanced sword swishing adventure. These Vikings may not totally convince as mead swigging, women chasing, pillagers of England, yet running along side Mario Nascimbene's terrific score and Jack Cardiff's excellent photography (the Norway location scenes are breath taking), it doesn't take much for the discerning genre fan to get swept away in it all.

Douglas and Curtis give it a good blast, while Janet Leigh as Morganna perks her breasts out and actually becomes believable as a lady lusted after by two rough and ready ruffians. However, The Vikings doesn't sit up in the top echelons of swords and sandals pictures, something which irked both Douglas and director Richard Fleischer and caused them to hold each other responsible during the following years. With bad weather, injuries to actors and even a strike by Norwegian oarsmen to contend with, it was a far from easy shoot. Casting those issues aside, one tends to think that Douglas' ire was warranted, for Fleischer was clearly the wrong choice for the piece. He chooses to go for a more genial, almost comic book approach, which sadly loses what earthy grit and grime feel the film needed once Orson Welles' splendid opening narration had set things up for a bodice ripping sword slashing epic.

The director isn't found lacking with his action sequences though. With the likes of Fantastic Voyage, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea & 10 Rillington Place on his CV, he clearly was a director of worth. Here he impresses with his construction of the kinetic sword fights, while the attack on Nothumberland Castle (really it's Brittany, France, with Cardiff's camera working the oracle) is brilliantly staged and pumps the pulse rate considerably. Pic is often violent and features some genre moments never to be forgotten (Einar losing his eye, Ragnar and the Wolf Pit, The Running the Oars tradition), while it's also pleasing to find a director overseeing some attentive research that opens up the craftsman side of the Viking hoards.

So all in all it's a fine and entertaining genre picture that's arguably more fun than dramatic gold, a film that was a fave of many who got lost in its charms all those years ago. The flaws and minor frustrations are obvious when one revisits with older and wiser eyes, but regardless one should crack open the mead and enjoy the sheer grizzled guts of it all. 8/10

Big budget, starry-cast, historical, make that almost pre-historical, action movie where a one-eyed Kirk Douglas plays a rumbustious (that's putting it mildly) Viking prince and his unwitting half-brother Tony Curtis (the offspring of Douglas's dad, King Ragnar's, rape of the British queen on a previous raid, years before) a soon-to-be one-handed British slave who are both vying for the love of Welsh princess Janet Leigh, whilst Ernest Borgnine as Ragnar eggs his boy on from the sidelines. There's also a minor sub-plot about the Vikings crossing the water to remove from power the new, cruel, usurping English king who's tricked Curtis's Eric out of his birthright to be king himself and who to seal the deal just happens to get himself betrothed to the young Leigh.

The movie is beautifully shot in natural light in and around actual Norwegian fjords which look superb in big-screen colour and the recreation of the Viking long-boats by the film's carpenters is also remarkable, but if I'm starting a review by praising the backgrounds, it probably means there's a want in the foreground, and so it proves.

Douglas's boorish Einar looks old enough to be Eric's half-father and his usually drunken behaviour hardly endears him to the viewer. At one point he is determined to rape Leigh's Princess Morgana and is only stopped by Curtis's timely intervention. Curtis's character, unusually, is a man of few words but even with a beard, the young Tony doesn't completely convince playing it strong and silent. The object of their affections, Janet Leigh, appears able to bewitch these two the minute they clap eyes on her, which I suppose is fair enough as she does look lovely in her robes, but she's not really required to do much between simpering and occasionally seething.

There are some odd scenes of I presume authentic old Viking customs, if you exclude feasting, drinking and womanising on a Henry VIII scale that is, like "walking the oars" and strangest of all the method of proving a wife's infidelity which involves putting her in a set of stocks, then nailing up her outstretched hair plaits and inviting her allegedly cuckolded husband to free her by throwing axes to sever her plaits. Talk about being saved by a hair's breadth. Elswhere there's no stinting on the crowd scenes and the battle scenes are reasonably exciting if not wholly convincing.

This film was reasonably entertaining as a spectacle but for me was let down by the hackneyed plotting, use of extreme coincidence and shallow characterisation. Douglas and Curtis of course would get back into tunics and sandals a few years later, but this time with a better tale to tell and under a master director in Stanley Kubrick. To paraphrase a famous line from that movie however, this film here isn't "Spartacus".