The Mark of Zorro

The only ingredient missing here is a Fox budget that would have provided Technicolor photography as a part of the film's lush production values. However, even without three-strip Technicolor, this B&W version of the famous legendary outlaw is acted to perfection by the entire cast.

Tyrone Power goes with great ease from the fop to the swashbuckler Zorro, all the while displaying a great deal of charm and good looks. The romantic role of "the girl" goes to Linda Darnell who is more than adequate in the looks department herself.

In the chapel scene and "The White Sombrero" dance routine they have a chance to show the kind of sparks that made them popular movie stars of the '40s. Linda was just about to break out of her virginal roles and about to play more tempestuous heroines, but she does an excellent job as Power's love interest.

Basil Rathbone is at his finest for the final dueling scene, surely even more robustly performed than the one he shared with Errol Flynn in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD--and that's really saying something. Power seems to be evenly matched with Rathbone in his skilled swordsmanship.

Alfred Newman's fitting pseudo-Spanish background music provides just the right amount of excitement to make this a most entertaining show. And the supporting cast--including Gale Sondergaard, J. Edgar Bromberg, Eugene Palette, Montagu Love, Janet Beecher and others is excellent.

By all means worth watching anytime for sheer entertainment.

Tyrone Power - the swashbuckling answer to Errol Flynn - is cast as the agile masked avenger who decides to take up the people's cause in disguise leaving his 'mark' "Z" everywhere, on walls, coach, wooden barrels and human chest...

Power - in a double leading role - is at his best as Zorro, climbing, jumping, riding and fencing, determined to finish with tyranny and oppression by terrorizing, and retrieving taxation funds and by challenging a cunning officer, proving in public his indifference, his ostentation and irony as a perfect pacifist fop in 19th-Century Spanish California, confusing and deceiving his aristocratic father Don Alejandro Vega (Montagu Love), the deposed Alcalde...

The inspired casting (in supporting roles) recalls "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

Linda Darnell is the pretty Lolita, Quintero's charming niece, who loves the mysterious hero and can't tolerate the fop until she is told that they are the image of the same person...

Basil Rathbone, one of the most durable of screen villains who has mastered stage fencing but never won a Swordfight, plays the cruel captain Esteban Pasquale, the Alcalde's military adviser... He is a second-rate soldier of fortune who leads the campaign of frustrating taxation, who considered Diego "a fancy clown" but who suggests a practical plan, an alliance for the good of the state...

J. Edward Bromberg is the cowardly Alcalde, Don Luis Quintero, a corrupted thief, enemy of the people, whose tyranny and avarice are always enforced by the treachery of his iron hand, the rigorous captain Esteban...

Eugene Palette plays the mission 'fat' priest (Father Felipe) who ignores that Diego is the opposing force...

The high point of the picture is the fantastic duel between Power and Rathbone, a masterpiece of screen Swordplay...

Rouben Mamoulian succeeds in making two great stars dance to an unheard music... With a touch of a great filmmaker, Mamoulian mixes harmoniously movement and action, decor and lightning with rage and turmoil, heroism and romance...

Under Alfred Newman's Oscar-Nominated score and despite the unusual absence of Technicolor, the film (the first of the great Tyrone Power swashbucklers ) is great fun, full of vitality and suspense, an exciting, deliciously ironic swashbuckler...

This is what I can't help but like about the old high seas adventures and swashbuckling romances of the 1930s and '40s. You know, the ones where you can always hear Alfred Newman's bombastic score. The Mask of Zorro opens with a title card saying, "Madrid - when the Spanish Empire encompassed the globe, and young blades were taught the fine and fashionable art of killing…" So what's that, like 18...30? 1840? I guess we'll figure it out. And so we do, of course. But there was an unabashed syrupy-ness about the melodramatic urgency given to these movies.

When Zorro's not prancing around in his little cape eye-mask, he's playing the part of the utterly timid, and more than a touch effeminate, Don Diego Vega. The likelihood that Vega could be the remarkably expert swashbuckler never once dawns on the baddies, largely because Vega is such a stern little prude.

The first big-budget talkie starring the swashbuckling samaritan, Rouben Mamoulian's old-fashioned jaunt was a blockbuster in 1940, and it remains recalled quite warmheartedly by the Silent Generation's moviegoers, and equally the small screen's fascinated beginners among the Baby Boom, as one of the period's very best adventure pictures. One grows accustomed to the movie's qualitative foothold in that time of matinée idols and sword-fighting silver-screen hero worship, and we can concede for that reason. But tolerant filmgoers will stay open for a movie that's considerably chock-a-block with romance, action, duplicity, and courageous bravado, all in an overstated manner that could've only been taken seriously in 1940, and perhaps not one year later.

The nuts and bolts are all here: Don Diego is invited to come home from Madrid to his family in Los Angeles, but upon his reappearance he learns that his father's standing as "alcalde" has been seized by the shameless Don Luis Quintero, a nasty piece of work who's nothing more than a minion to the man enjoying the real supremacy: Captain Esteban Pasquale. As expected, Diego/Zorro means to linger in Los Angeles just long enough to depose the scoundrels, entice a pretty slice of illicit fruit, and bring integrity to his family's native soil. Nothing ground-breaking here, but there's nothing amiss in a straightforward adventure yarn told in the traditional way.

altho Tyrone Power's no slouch. His looks are perfect for he role and he plays the fop wonderfully well:

"Alcalde, I ask for your niece's hand in marriage. A refusal would crush me."

Basil, aside from playing the villain in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and the famous detective in 14 Sherlock Holmes movies, was a master swordsman, and the final duel is breathtakingly fast and furious. He was so good in the role I hated to see him killed!

The theme music by Alfred Newman is appropriately stirring. And Gale Sondergaard is wonderful as the woman you love to hate. 18-year old Linda Darnell is beautiful but quite stiff in the role.

Note: Eugene Pallette, a Robert Newton look & sound-alike, who played the Padre in this, also played a priest, Friar Tuck, in "Robin Hood," also starring Basil. Also, the 1974 TV version with Frank Langella, Ricardo Montalban & Anne Archer, the first Zorro version I ever saw, uses the same theme soundtrack, and the script and dialogue are very similar to the 1940 version. I recommend this TV version as well.

Great action and at the same time one of the most hilarious roles ever to come out of Hollywood. Tyrone Power is great in the title role, not only when in full swashbuckling action as Zorro, but also as the effeminate dandy Don Diego Vega, fanning his handkerchief, sneezing, and performing ridiculous magic tricks upon stupid prison wardens, when not courting the beautiful Alcalde's daughter Inez Quintero. You gotta love Zorro, the good old-fashioned hero of LA county, always prepared to fight for justice, fight poverty and save damsels in distress, occasionally engraving the mark "Z", preferably on men's chest or cloth.

There's enough innuendo and snappy dialog in here to keep adult audiences entertained as well as enough action for younger audiences to cherish this film (and even enough romance with dashing Power to keep the ladies satisfied). Basil Rathbone, as Captain Esteban Pasquale, makes a superb villain, always prepared to draw his sword, either for serious business or sadistic amusement. "Most men have objects they play with. Churchmen have their beads; I toy with a sword."

Wit Tyrone Power's undisputed comedic talent, he adds so much wit into his character (and to the already hilarious lines), the film is a real hoot. It's a shame Power embarked on more serious roles later in his career. With most of the lines ranging from the outright hilarious to marvelously corny, like Don Diego Vega's courting of the young lady Inez: "You're more lovely, more radiant than a morning in June," it's hard to take it all very serious, but when the fencing starts, playtime is over. Basil Rathbone, one of Hollywood's most skilled swordsmen, knows how to handle a sword like no-one else and Tyrone Power was quick to learn. The climactic swashbuckling scene between the two arch enemies in the small confined room of the Alcalde (brilliantly choreographed) is - till this very day - the best sword fight ever put on film, even surpassing the final fight between Rathbone and Errol Flynn, two years before in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938).

Camera Obscura --- 9/10