THE PRISONER OF ZENDA: 2-disc (Selznick International, 1937/MGM, 1952) Warner Home Video
The swashbuckler is perhaps the
most challenging of all sub-genre actioners to pull off successfully. After
all, not every man can wear a flouncy shirt, tights and a codpiece and still
come across as the embodiment of strapping masculinity. The illusion is even
more of an impediment when one considers the daring doer must also speak in a
pseudo-old English or colloquial Shakespeare-ease to accommodate the
undisclosed period, buttress its fanciful romanticism and mask its
uber-modernity, so as to make it palpable to contemporary audiences. In point
of fact, Ronald Colman was not at all certain he wanted the part in John
Cromwell’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), one of the undisputed classy
swashbucklers from Hollywood’s golden age, and, a ravishing crossed-swords
adventure yarn besides, based on the popular 1894 novel by Anthony Hope. The
book was a perennial favorite and in Hollywood. It would remain so for decades
to come. Thus, when producer, David O. Selznick undertook to make his movie
adaptation, he was already working from the vantage that any movie of Hope’s
novel would be an immediate success. Oh, that Selznick. What a clairvoyant! But
Colman was a very reluctant star, not entirely because the part involved a
certain flair and flamboyance, but equally owing to the fact he had to play two
roles for the price of one; English commoner on holiday, Major Rudolf
Rassendyll and his distant cousin, King Rudolf – supreme monarch of the
fictional European principality of Zenda. Filmed stories set in imaginary
Ruritanian conclaves had a certain appeal with movie audiences then –
particularly in America where royalty was regarded as something other-worldly,
mysterious and grand. Moreover, such fodder provided the studios with an
obvious opportunity to show off their ostentatiousness and riches.
As with virtually all of the movies
Selznick had produced to date, but perhaps even more so as an independent, The
Prisoner of Zenda was approached with great verve and very high
expectations. After reading John L. Balderston’s screenplay, itself a masterful
patchwork tweaked by Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht and Sidney Howard, Ronald
Colman agreed to star in the picture. Ironically, the last time he had played
dual roles in a single picture was in Selznick’s A Tale of Two Cities (1935),
produced over at MGM. Left to his own accord, Selznick could be a most
fastidious taskmaster. However, cast and crew were generally spared his more
interminable meddling as he was already embroiled in pre-production on his
magnum opus, Gone With The Wind (1939) by the time ‘Zenda’
went into production. Selznick cast The Prisoner of Zenda from the top-tier of
established talent. He wanted – and signed – Raymond Massey for the role of
Prince Michael, the king’s black-hearted brother, plotting to overthrow the
kingdom by drugging Rudolf with some laced wine. Massey may not have been a
very physically attractive man, raising a few eyebrows as to why the
pure-heart, though undeniably sexy Antoinette de Mauban (Mary Astor) should so
passionately have affixed her star to Prince Michael as her only ideal. But
Massey was a formidable talent; exuding a Teutonic, penetrating wickedness to
the core; unadulterated villainy on cue. Astor, it seems, was working against
type – if convincingly – as the sweet innocent widow. In real life, matters
were decidedly different. A bitter divorce from her husband resulted in Astor’s
private diary leaked to the press, littered with tawdry details about her blue
escapades.
For counterbalance to Massey’s
gargoyle-ish malevolence, Selznick made the fortuitous decision to cast Douglas
Fairbanks Jr. in the pivotal role as Michael’s right-hand; the despicable
womanizer and unrepentant cutthroat, Rupert of Henzau. Fairbanks Jr.’s early
foray in the movies had been overshadowed by the silent screen legacy of his
own father. Early attempts to mold ‘junior’ into a carbon-copied knockoff were
harshly judged by the critics, despite the fact Fairbanks held his own and was,
for a time, considered a matinee idol male ‘beauty’ in the industry. He worked
steadily – if in mostly forgettable films – but would distinguish himself
herein and later, rather splendidly opposite Cary Grant in 1939’s Gunga Din. In truth, there is little if any similarity
between father and son on which to draw or even erroneously base such a
parallel. Fairbanks Sr.’s robust physicality had rivaled Valentino’s raw animal
magnetism and sex appeal during the silent era. Fairbanks Jr., although
handsome, was not of this strapping, dark-haired Lothario ilk. His was a more
fine-boned beauty, unable to make the ladies swoon at a glance. Mercifully,
Selznick was not casting Fairbanks Jr. for his sex appeal, but rather his
acting prowess.
Even more ironic, Fairbanks would
find a way to exude a sort of sinful and corrupted sensuality – barbaric, yet
attractive. Viewing Fairbanks’ nefarious Henzau today, one is immediately
struck by his captivating streak of genuine cruelty. Fairbanks plays Henzau
with delicious venom; the rapscallion, superficially amused while out on his
sprees, whose loyalties can turn on a dime. He is a lady killer – just not the
one you might want to bring home to mother for fear he would have his
non-discriminate way with her too. Of all the actors cast in The Prisoner of
Zenda, Fairbanks’ remains the most intriguing, particularly in his verbal
sparring with Colman during their climactic duel. This has a decidedly
homo-erotic undercurrent lurking beneath a surface of contemptible jealousy;
Henzau goading ‘the play actor’ with unabashed testosterone overdrive,
perfectly counterbalanced by Colman’s unimpeachable cool-headed sophistication;
the boy vs. the man – youth, narrowly murdering its ‘father figure’, before
escaping to terrorize another kingdom/another day.
Ronald Colman plays what he always
did – nobler masculinity; genuine and unfettered by personal ambitions…except,
perhaps where the Princess Flavia is concerned. Casting Flavia proved something
of a minor quandary for Selznick at first. It was not a great part, per say,
sandwiched between the royal espionage and predominantly male-preoccupied
exploits of exhilarating swordplay and chases on horseback. But the actress
assigned to it needed to convey not only an amalgam of virginal beauty and
regal deportment, but equally a sense of inner warmth. Only in hindsight, does Madeleine Carroll
prove an ideal choice, possessing all these intangibles Selznick had hoped for
in his fairy-tale princess; plush with a sparkle of playfulness and stately air
of duty. This bode well with Colman during their love scenes; particularly, the
couple’s one and only moment alone in the garden; Colman, as Rassendyll,
playing the King, drawn nearer by her porcelain beauty; Carroll’s glacial
façade as a proper aristocrat oft spurned in her own romantic daydreams by the
real king, suddenly thawed by his intonated affections; Rassendyll’s moment of
revelation, “Flavia…if I were not the king…” thwarted by a perfectly
timed interruption from Colonel Zapt (C. Aubrey Smith).
Selznick allowed director, John
Cromwell to ‘find’ his subject matter as it had been Cromwell who petitioned
Selznick to make The Prisoner of Zenda. Mildly distracted by
pre-production fiascoes/delays on GWTW, Selznick agreed. He liked the
book, but moreover knew Cromwell’s workhorse attitude would get the job done
without delays. But almost immediately, Selznick replaced Cromwell’s choice of
cameraman, Bert Glennon with James Wong Howe after only two weeks of shooting,
after he became dissatisfied by rushes illustrating a pro- and epilogue; Colman
appropriately aged by Universal’s makeup wizard, Jack Dawn and seated in an
over-sized easy chair, regaling the audience with exploits having occurred some
forty years earlier. After some consternation, these bookends to the ‘movie
proper’ were discarded by Selznick. For one reason or another, Hollywood of
this vintage favored the flashback as a technique to launch into literary
adaptations; the story usually beginning with a shot of the novel about to be
immortalized, pages magically turning to its preface before dissolving into the
plot. In scrapping such a device for The Prisoner of Zenda Selznick lost
a scant six minutes. But he also firmly grounded the movie’s action in an
immediacy – if not the present – after a regiment of Zenda’s proud military are
seen beneath the titles, trumpets heralding the start of the picture.
Composer, Alfred Newman had been
freelancing around Hollywood throughout the 1930's. Of all the composers
working in Hollywood then, Newman (closely matched by Max Steiner) is perhaps
the most prolific. Certainly, he was one of the busiest; scoring more than 200
features as well as overseeing the daily management of composers, Bernard
Hermann and Hugo Friedhofer over at 2oth Century-Fox by the mid-1940s as that
studio’s resident composer/conductor. While many today remember Alfred Newman
primarily for his iconic Fox fanfare, heard with a Cinemascope extension
ever-since the mid-1950s, as many have forgotten Newman also penned the iconic
Selznick International fanfare, with its bell chimes backed by a full
orchestral underlay. Newman’s compositions for The Prisoner of Zenda are
undeniably among his greatest contributions to film underscoring. Tragically,
none of his original cues have survived in isolated recording sessions. From
his bombastic main title overture to the eloquently integrated cues that
imperceptibly stem from this central ‘Prisoner of Zenda’ theme in
and out of George Frideric Handel’s ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ from
Judas Maccabaeus (heard during Rassendyll’s coronation), or Johann Strauss II’s
Artist’s Life Waltz (sumptuously presented in a magnificently stylized
and thoroughly palatial ballroom), Newman establishes, then captivates us with
the royal patina and energetic verve of the piece; his orchestrations, lusty
personifications of that North American sentimentality for lost and imaginary
pseudo-European landscapes, re-envisioned with their exaggerated gemütlich and
wiener schnitzel charm.
The Prisoner of
Zenda begins with a steam locomotive barreling through an undisclosed
Tyrolean countryside. As passengers disembark to have their passports checked –
presumably due to heightened security measures imposed for the King’s
coronation in Zenda’s capital, Strelsau, Major Rudolf Rassendyll, a courtly
Englishman sporting a Svengali-esque goatee and toting his hunting rifle, is
seen being interrogated. Almost immediately he incurs paralytic stares from the
local gentry; quite unable to fathom what has sent everyone into their
collective state of shock. After customs passes him on, the camera tilts to a
nearby poster advertising the King’s coronation – the portrait bearing and
uncanny resemblance to the traveler we have just met. We regress to a
picturesque forest. Asleep under a tall pine, Rudolf is discovered by Colonel
Zapt and his second in command, Fritz von Tarlenheim (David Niven); loyalists
to and protectors of the crown. Their amazement is matched by Rudolf’s own;
also by the King’s, the physical similarities between the two men (both played
by Colman convincingly in a single split/screen shot) are suddenly brought to
light. Rudolf confesses they share a blood connection dating all the way back
to their great, great, great grandfather and Cousin Amelia. Delighted, the King
invites Rudolf to spend the evening at his hunting lodge, also to accompany him
to his coronation in Strelsau the following afternoon.
Regrettably, the King indulges in
too much wine the night before, as do Rassendyll and Fritz. Col. Zapt
encourages his sovereign to tread lightly on their revelries; a suggestion that
momentarily incurs the King’s wrath. Losing his head, Rudolf strikes Zapt in
the face. The old gentleman, devoted since the King’s father’s time, takes his
leave. Ashamed of his actions, the King gets quietly drunk on a new bottle of
wine. Unfortunately, this vintage has been deliberately tainted by the King’s
elder jealous half-brother, Michael (Raymond Massey), the King falling into a
paralytic slumber from which he will not awaken for at least twenty-four hours;
long enough to miss his own coronation and have Michael declared regent with
the aid of a forged letter. The next morning, Zapt awakens Rassendyll with a
cold pitcher of water. At first insulted, Rassendyll soon learns of the King’s
fate; also, his own. Now he must go to Strelsau in the King’s stead, to pull
off the ultimate masquerade and be crowned King in order to preserve Zenda’s
fragile monarchy. After some initial reluctance, Rassendyll agrees and the
coronation takes place inside a resplendent cathedral. Naturally, Michael and
his henchman, Rupert of Henzau are both perplexed by his arrival. Michael
orders Henzau to the hunting lodge to find out what went wrong. But the
coronation proceeds without pause. Rassendyll meets the Princess Flavia
(Madeleine Carroll) – soon to be Queen. At first, she is curt and unreceptive.
It seems the King was never particularly engaging; their arranged marriage
resulting in several awkward and unremarkable meetings in their youth – one, in
particular that made the then teenage Flavia weep and despise her lot own in
life…until now.
Only ‘this’ King seems an entirely
new man; one unimpeded by drink, carousing or any other vices Flavia can recall
from childhood. In fact, the more she becomes reacquainted with the King, the
more she begins to realize her appointment to the crown will not be as much of
an internment as she had at first envisioned. Rassendyll is taken with Flavia,
a flawed indulgence that can only end in disappointment. For later that same
night, Zapt escorts him back to the hunting lodge where, so it is presumed, the
real King and Rudolf will make the switch back. Unfortunately for Zapt, Henzau
has been to the lodge first, kidnapped the King and pinned an ominous note on
the bloody body of the lodge’s butler, Josef (Howard Lang). Henzau now knows
the truth. But he cannot expose it without giving away his own as well as
Michael’s treason. Zapt and Rassendyll
contemplate their next move, eventually deciding Rassendyll must continue as
Zenda’s monarch until Zapt and Fritz can learn the whereabouts of the real
King.
Realizing Michael would not take
any chances having an imposter rule for the rest of his days, Rassendyll
reluctantly agrees to maintain their charade. The next evening at a lavish
ball, he is reunited with Flavia; their burgeoning romance momentarily thwarted
by Zapt, then cooling entirely after Rassendyll suggests to his eminence, the
Cardinal (Ian MacLaren) that a postponement of their marriage by six months is
in order. Later in the garden, Rassendyll implores Flavia’s forgiveness and indulgence
– prompting her concern for his safety because of a suspected plot afoot to
oust him from the throne. Henzau tells Michael about the switch and the two
imprison the real King in the dungeon of one of Michael’s castles. The King,
who has been wounded by Henzau, lies helpless and enfeebled, constantly
threatened by Henzau with certain death by being weighted and dropped into the
moat. Later, Henzau arrives at the King’s hunting lodge where Zapt and Fritz
have taken Rassendyll. Henzau jovially refers to him as ‘the play actor’ before
making an attempt on his life with a dagger. Henzau narrowly escapes being shot
at by Zapt and Fritz.
The trap has been set for a pending
palace coup. It is imperative someone rescue the real King and soon.
Antoinette, who believes Michael’s obsession with the throne will end once the
real King is rightfully restored, offers her complicity in Zapt and Fritz’s
rescue plan, but only if the promise is made Michael will not be killed or
imprisoned, rather exiled abroad. Zapt agrees and Antoinette explains how the
trio can break into the castle after the midnight changing of the guard.
Unfortunately, Henzau gets wind of this plot. He murders Antoinette’s loyal
manservant, Johann (Byron Folger) and then inadvertently kills Michael after
he, having presumed an affair between Antoinette and Henzau, barges into her
room only to meet with his fate at the point of Henzau’s sword. Rassendyll
engages Henzau in a spirited duel, superbly crafted in half-light and shadow.
In the ensuing clash of swords, Rassendyll risks being wounded to release the
drawbridge, thereby affording Zapt, Fritz and their armed militia the
opportunity to storm the fortress and rescue the wounded King.
The next day, Rassendyll is
summoned to the King’s bedchamber. The King merciful and grateful explains the
secret of Rassendyll’s coronation must never be known. Both men agree. Still,
Rassendyll cannot go without one last clandestine meeting with Flavia. Alas,
the Princess in her antechamber is not the winsome girl of his dreams. Although
the couple professes their love for one another, Flavia reminds Rassendyll that
duty binds her now to a higher authority than his love for her. She must marry the King. In the final
moments, Rassendyll is seen atop his noble steed, escorted to the borders of
the Province of Zenda. The parting is bittersweet for Fritz who declares “Fate
doesn’t always make the right men kings.” Seemingly contented to return to
England, Rassendyll dashes up the hillside, pausing a moment to wave goodbye to
Fritz and Zapt. They have run a good course together, but their adventurisms
have decidedly come to an end.
The Prisoner of
Zenda was, and remains, an extraordinary entertainment – by far one of the
most stirring and introspective swashbucklers in screen history. At a cost of
$1.3 million, ‘Zenda’s’ $2.8 million box office ought to have
made it one of Selznick’s most successful ventures. Regrettably, the profit
margin was a scant $665,000 – the rest of the film’s revenue eaten away by
Selznick’s pursuit of perfection. For a little over the decade, Selznick
continued to retain the rights to this story. But in 1950, he had gambled once
too often and lost too many times. The movies made by Selznick International
after Gone With The Wind continued to be handcrafted like a Rolls-Royce,
but by 1949 their dwindling profits toppled Selznick from his perch. Selznick
was forced to sell off the rights to ‘Zenda’ to MGM. Indeed, L.B.
Mayer had relentlessly pursued this property for a Technicolor remake for some
time. In 1952, it became a reality – a very sad one at that.
The 1952 version of The Prisoner
of Zenda is a woefully undernourished affair, garish and awkwardly miscast;
its featherweight Ruritanian plot imploding under the heft of its top-heavy
accoutrements. Despite its sumptuous use of Technicolor, the remake is a pale
ghost of the original; lacking the intuitive craftsmanship to make it excel as
a truly memorable entertainment. The remake cast Stewart Granger in the dual
role. Granger, then making a name for himself as a valiant successor to the
likes of Colman and possibly even Errol Flynn with the resplendent Technicolor
remake of Scaramouche (also in 1952) is very ill at ease in The Prisoner of
Zenda – his Rassendyll and King Rudolf far too similar and thus exposing the
ruse of the split/screen process. Colman’s strength in the original is he
manages to convey subtle differences between the King and Rassendyll –
differences not only in mannerisms but also distinct character traits that
convince us of a plausible duality. Worse, is the incalculable misfire of
casting James Mason as Rupert of Henzau. Where Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had been a
wily and soulless creature of spurious ambitions and sexual appetites, Mason’s
incarnation merely plays off the actor’s well-established asexual appeal as a
diminished - if tragic – and careworn figure of flawed and thwarted ambitions.
Deborah Kerr’s Flavia manages to capture the stateliness, but none of the
warmth of Madeleine Carroll's fairy tale goddess, while Robert Douglas, as
Prince Michael, barely registers as anything except an insipid and
sulking/skulking baddie.
On this occasion, Cedric Gibbons’
immaculate art direction seems to have succumbed to a chronic bout of bad
taste. The kingdom of Zenda, while timelessly captured in glorious B&W in
Selznick’s original, now appears as a fanciful fashion parade, steeped in
obvious props and gaudy costumes, the sets culled from Metro’s acquisitions for
Thalberg’s production of Marie Antoinette (1938), yet somehow more at home as a
Vaudevillian operetta than ageless and magical kingdom. The final nail in the
coffin is MGM’s insistence on reusing Alfred Newman’s original music cues,
herein re-orchestrated by Conrad Salinger with embellishments made and tempos
altered that neither improve upon Newman’s originals nor augment the new visual
material in any sort of meaningful way. Evidently, the public agreed. The
remake of The Prisoner of Zenda was not a success. In the final
analysis, it is Selznick’s original movie that endures as a model of exquisite
good taste and supremely stylish action/adventure. In the intervening decades, other imitators
have come and gone, even an atrociously bungled – and rarely seen 1979 remake
with Peter Sellers that attempted to make a comedy of the careworn palace
intrigues. But in the end, 1937’s The Prisoner Of Zenda is the movie
with all the magic still intact nearly 80 years later. Viewed today, it is as
much a time capsule of that ancient flower once known as Hollywood as a
thoroughly faithful adaptation of Anthony Hope’s exhilarating novel.
Warner Home Video made The
Prisoner(s) of Zenda available together on a single flipper disc as part of
their Literary Classics collection, with video transfers dating all the way back to 1998. And while the merits of the Selznick
version are pretty hard to miss or beat, regrettably the transfer quality on
both versions is highly suspect. On the B&W 1937 edition, the image is
rather heavy with a very thick patina of film grain and a lot of age-related
damage that intrudes on our appreciation for the story. Contrast seems solidly
rendered in some scenes but exceptionally weak elsewhere. Evidently, film
elements have not been altogether successfully preserved. The 1937 Zenda
cries out for a restoration. I would sincerely love the Warner Archive to get
busy on a Blu-ray remastering of this classy original. Pretty please, WAC. The
sooner, the better. The 1952 remake is another matter entirely. The Technicolor
has held up remarkably well, but occasionally suffers from glaring amounts of
mis-registration with slight halos to blur and distort fine detail. Age-related
artifacts are still an issue but do not seem nearly as distracting as on the
Selznick original. Contrast is more refined and film grain far more naturally
realized and rendered. The audio on both versions is mono, but on the 1937 it
can infrequently sound very strident – particularly during a few of the music
cues. Warner really needs to go back and do this title justice. This disc won’t
win any awards and that is a shame, because the Selznick version of The
Prisoner of Zenda is a movie that needs to be seen and re-seen. Extras are
sorely limited to unrelated short subjects, a radio adaptation and theatrical
trailers. Aside: if this ever goes to Blu-ray, we absolutely need a commentary
track for the 1937 version. As far as I am concerned, the 52’ need not be given
the same consideration, nor a Blu-ray release. Bottom line: recommended for
content, not for quality.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
1937 version –
5+
1952 version –
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
Both versions –
2.5
EXTRAS
2
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