Les croisades

The name De Mille evokes big sets, big costumes and bigger action and Crusades was his follow up to his earlier take on Christian oration from the scandalous - in a good way - Sign of the cross. Henry Wilcoxson, his Marc Anthony of Cleopatra and the always beautiful Loretta Young team up in this extravagant epic. King Richard the Lionheart is not a Christian and is not faithful to the ways of the sign of the cross but to escape a forced marriage he signs up for the Crusades to free the holy city of Jerusalem. Of course, there is scheming behind his back to seize his throne while he is gone. Along the way he trades for a wife, Loretta and haggles and argues with his other European leaders. Now, it has often not be said for it is almost as if De Mille build big sets and big stories to tell little moments for all his excess, his movies are ridiculously dialogue driven, even by the standards of the other expensive blockbuster-type movies made back then. De Mille loved dialogue scenes and focusing on character. Very strange. And this movie is really a politics and character movie as the future of Europe is argued and royal pompous exposed. The action sequences are obvious studio sets but well shot. The final moments have good heart that is not forced but earned. Thus, is this a good movie. It is hard to say because for every good scene there is a juvenile scene obviously put in to satiate the masses. Good direction though, very good direction. That said, Crusades lost money when first released, if you only look at its Domestic boxoffice rentals but was the biggest grossing movie of its year.

Starring Henry Wilcoxon, Loretta Young, and Ian Keith. This film focuses mainly on the Third Crusade, with events from the others used as background.

In 1187 , when infidels take Jerusalem and hold Christians captive, a man called The Hermit escapes and goes back to Europe, preaching for a Crusade to free Jerusalem. Several countries join. When The Hermit reaches England, King Richard the Lion-Hearted (Henry Wilcoxon) joins the Crusade to avoid marriage to Alice (Katharine DeMille), the King of France's sister. When the soldiers from the various countries reach Navarre, the King of Navarre sells his daughter Berengaria (Loretta Young) in marriage to Richard in exchange for rations for the soldiers and horses. The director in tall boots takes the story from there.

This film is long, drawn out by political intrigues and lots of speeches about Christianity being the only true religion. Film Finally wakes up in the second hour with some spectacular footage of the siege of Acre, and the plot gets moving.

Wilcoxon plays Richard as a thuggish dimwit. Young is seemingly the only person in the film to have a brain in her head, and who acts with subtlety. Ian Keith, as Saladin, does well in a small role. Everyone else is either of very good or very bad character, and you can tell by their dialogue in their first sentence which they're meant to be. No real nuance in the characterization. Alan Hale is annoying as a minstrel.

The film is almost free of knee slapping lines, but there is one priceless line. Just before Acre is attacked, a sentry yells: "The Christians are coming! The Christians are coming!".

Comic book history, smothered with religion to please the production code, and spectacle on the side. It's an okay watch-just have caffeine handy for the talky scenes in the first hour.

A playboy king & a beautiful princess. A holy hermit & a sacred mission. Intrigue & romance & sin & spectacle. In fact, another Cecil B. DeMille history lesson.

This time, DeMille takes on THE CRUSADES, a highly complex military & political enterprise that actually played out over 200 years. He focuses on one episode: The Third Crusade & England's King Richard the Lionheart's thrust to claim Jerusalem & the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks in 1188-1192. Interestingly enough, DeMille gets a lot of his historical facts correct, but he does spend quite a bit of time detailing Richard's lustful, wanton ways.

Literature & film have tended to wildly romanticize Richard. In historical fact, he was a bad king interested primarily in his own glory. He spent only 6 months of his reign in Britain, he bankrupted the Treasury with his Crusading schemes and he abandoned his young wife. But such is the power of Romance that he is generally seen as the beau ideal of kingliness.

Henry Wilcoxon is a good, sturdy, if unspectacular, Richard. Loretta Young is beautiful, as always, as the Princess he marries. Sir C. Aubrey Smith is magnificent as the Holy Hermit who is the spiritual leader of the Crusade. Others in the fine cast are Alan Hale, Joseph Schildkraut, Mischa Auer & John Carradine (pay close attention to find him).

As a master of spectacle, DeMille really comes through towards the end of the film with the siege & capture of Acre (north of present day Haifa in Israel).All the stops are pulled out to show the full panoply & horror of mediaeval battle.

The production values of this picture are excellent. You can tell from the sets and costumes a lot of money was spent. The great weakness of this film is the script and acting technique. The script is straight 19th century maudlin melodrama. Unfortunately, the acting technique is the same. Lines are delivered in a stilted, formal manner common to the stage of an earlier era instead of the more natural technique we are accustomed to seeing in film today. The 30's was indeed a transition period in acting technique: the over wrought melodramatic technique of the silent pictures and stage in the early thirties to the natural technique finally adopted in the late 30's. Of course, the plot itself is implausibly melodramatic "love conquers all" for "world peace" kind of thing. Still, for a film student its still worth watching for the fine directing.

The first part of the film is excellent with only credits to the sustained grand cinematography with constantly impressing settings and great acting, showing all the best of what made Cecil B. DeMille the greatest director of epics in Hollywood. The second part is ridiculous, a very liberal rewriting of history, the script writers using it lavishly to construe their own fancies, resulting in a monumental soap opera. Loretta Young is the star of the film, constantly bewitching as Berengaria, and actually living up to her real legendary beauty - her beautiful legendary hair, very much emhanced in the film, has sometimes been confused with the constellation "Berenice's hair", while Berengaria couldn't have been far from it. Henry Wilcoxon also makes a Richard Lionheart with credibility enough, he actually was like that in reality, outragesously insolent, politically impossible for his lack of realism and reliability, a great romantic but no good as a husband, and a hopelessly foolhardy daredevil. Here of course he is made more ideal, as Hollywood always did in the 30s, and you forgive the gross distortions of history in the second part because of his charming chivalry. The film is good but not one of DeMille's best, but it is impressing enough, and the first part, until the ridiculous Saladin-Berengaria affair gets started, is among the best of DeMille's works.