(THE ADVENTURES OF) QUENTIN DURWARD (1955)

When IVANHOE/’52 outperformed commercially & critically (who saw that coming?), M-G-M producer Pandro S. Berman doubled down with a swashbuckling followup for journeyman contract helmer Richard Thorpe & journeyman contract star Robert Taylor, turning out the worst of all Camelot pics in KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE/’53: Taylor as a rather mature Lancelot in a tizzy over Ava Gardner’s louche Guinevere & Mel Ferrer’s wan Arthur. No matter, as one of the first CinemaScope releases, it did plenty o’ biz, enough to justify another go at the form. Still, someone must have noticed how droopy KNIGHTS was in spite of buffo box-office and tried to jazz up this Walter Scott adaptation with an ironic/comic edge: the age of chivalry is ending, gunpowder & shot have upended old ideas of truth & honor. So when Taylor calls on a French King for the hand of Countess Kay Kendall, asking not for himself (though he’s instantly smitten by the lady, as who wouldn’t be?*), but as emissary for ancient Lord Ernest Thesinger, he expects a fit greeting. But Robert Morley’s devious Louis XI has court games of his own to play, pitching one French Feudal Dutchy against another in a grand design to line up a proper Kingdom. If only you didn’t need a scorecard to keep track of the plots & counterplots; or if the attempted comic tone weren’t a bust from the start. And those long lines of CinemaScopic pageantry? They seem barely connected to the action. Yet about halfway in, as the tone shifts toward something less jocular, the film suddenly starts to work. Morley in particular comes to life as a frightening and very particular sort of Kingly character. (His second Louis for M-G-M, after Louis XVI in MARIE ANTOINETTE/’38.) And it’s all topped with a truly incredible Bell Tower sword fight finale for Taylor and his arch enemy (whomever that guy is supposed to be!), clanging clappers in a climax someone should have earned a bonus for. (Or is it in the novel?) Far better than KNIGHTS, it was a commercial flop and Taylor never donned metal cod piece again.

DOUBLE-BILL: *See the inimitable Kay Kendall in far more congenial circumstances in her next two films: George Cukor’s semi-musical LES GIRLS/’57 and Vincente Minnelli’s sly social romp THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE/’58, the latter with husband Rex Harrison, proudly gazing at her.