JohnnyFrench Chivalry was a popular movie theme concept at the beginning of the fifties. "Ivanhoe" produced by MGM was a huge box-office success, and I suppose all studios wanted to make cash on it at this time. It gave us "Knights of the round table", "Prince Valiant", etc. The result here is not the best you could have setting the story in the XVth century England, because the elements of the script are too traditional (some would write cliché) to have a very exciting show. After the first 15 minutes of the movie you're actually able to predict the fate of all the characters, no matter they are good, bad, or ugly. Does it mean "The black shield of Falworth" is an annoying movie ? Hell no, especially if you're under 14. The classical components of the script (young and pretty heroes, very very unpleasant baddies, action, treason, climax and final victory of honor and justice) are well managed, the dialogs and situations, if predictable, are quite entertaining. I know that because I watched it for the first time on videotape in 1994 (time passes, yes), and wasn't disappointed watching it yesterday.So, even if it is not the best chivalry movie of the era, you can trust it not to be bored during a rainy WE afternoon with your children. By the current times, it is much.

ianlouisiana Tony Curtis...how I wanted to be him back in 1956.The hair,the voice,the athleticism and grace....and married to Janet Leigh,it must have been just about the perfect life.I saw him on "The One Show" on BBC last month and he still looks better than me,still has the ladies swooning,and he's in a wheelchair for heaven's sake.Go figure. Unfairly denigrated and ignored for nearly half a century,"The black shield of Falworth"is just getting the recognition it deserves as a near perfect example of the Hollywood technicolor costume picture. It has no pretensions to historical accuracy,not a huge use is made of the iambic pentameter,the general filth and casual cruelty and violence of the Middle Ages is nowhere to be seen.This is Henry IVth's England as it never was,presented to ordinary 20th century audiences as a world of gentle knights with perfect teeth,dimpled maidens and big bad barons. It's entertainment,not a history lesson.And very successful entertainment too. Mr T.Curtis is outstanding as the young Falworth.Fizzing with suppressed energy,he tears into the part like a young puppy with a new toy.As a dispossessed heir,it is a role not unlike the one he would later play in the mighty "The Vikings".Mr T.Thatcher(no relation) gives his customary all as his mentor.Miss Leigh is charming and demure,Mr O' Herlihy a bluff Prince Hal. This picture is best viewed from behind a stick of candy floss,having just finished your "Kia Ora" and prior to daring to sneak your hand into your girl friend's.As your heart beats louder in your chest you can think that maybe you wouldn't want to swap places with Tony Curtis after all.

MARIO GAUCI As I am nearing the end of this eclectic but erratic month-long epic film viewing marathon, I have decided to dedicate this Saturday to revisiting my fondly remembered childhood memories of two vintage (but relatively minor) Technicolor swashbucklers which, thankfully, I purposely managed to acquire only recently: one is the latter-day Errol Flynn pirate yarn, AGAINST ALL FLAGS (1952; see below) and the other, naturally, the film under review.After all these years, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH still emerges as the engaging romp I recalled it to be and is, in fact, a superior piece of Hollywood hokum – so much so that it’s quite a mystery to me how the film (which was even Universal’s very first Widescreen picture) is as yet unavailable anywhere on DVD and I have had to make do with a full-frame VHSrip which, in hindsight, is of surprisingly tolerable quality (with only the tell-tale excessive headroom being indicative of the fact that it was shot in a different aspect ratio). In any case, I think it is high time that, like Rock Hudson before him, Tony Curtis be given his own “Franchise Collection” DVD release from Universal which ought to contain (for starters) the equally exotic THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (1951; his first starring vehicle which was also directed by FALWORTH helmer, Rudolph Mate'), SON OF ALI BABA (1952) and THE PURPLE MASK (1955) – as well as any of the other Universal programmers Curtis starred in before emerging (if only briefly) with an altogether more adult image for Alexander Mackendrick’s superb SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957).Anyhow, back to FALWORTH: set in England during the reign of King Henry IV (Ian Keith), Curtis is (albeit unknowingly at first) the son of an unjustly accused and executed aristocrat who, along with his lovely sister (Barbara Rush), embarks on his way to knighthood by joining the men-at-arms school situated in the castle of an old ally of his father’s (Herbert Marshall) and tyrannically overseen by cantankerous but ultimately well-meaning one-eyed warrior (Torin Thatcher). The impressive cast is further bolstered by the appearance of Curtis’ then-wife Janet Leigh (as Marshall’s daughter who, naturally, falls for the uncouth graces of this “county bumpkin”), Dan O’ Herlihy (in a drunken, buffoonish caricature of Prince Hal – later King Henry V – which is merely a front to mislead the traitors within his father’s court), David Farrar (as the villainous Earl of Alban), Patrick O’Neal (as the latter’s brother and Curtis’ chief contender at training school and for the hand of Leigh herself) and Rhys Williams (playing the loyal servant who harbors Curtis and Rush at the beginning of the film).While some of the plot points got hazier with the passage of time, I still remembered the scenes of Curtis climbing the walls of the castle to go romance Janet Leigh during her afternoon croquet lessons, of Curtis stumbling around upon donning heavy armor for the first time and the exciting climactic jousting duel between Curtis and Farrar; needless to say, I now much preferred the various vivid sequences of training and combat to the bland romantic stuff but, still, I was disappointed that the immortal, much derided line supposedly uttered by Curtis in this film, “Yonda lies da castle of my fodda”, is never actually spoken, resulting in yet another Hollywood legend – a' la ALGIERS (1938; “Come wiz me to the Casbah”) and CASABLANCA (1942; “Play it again, Sam”) – which has, with time, grown to become accepted as fact!

loza-1 Instead of trying to portray real historical events, Hollywood instead opts for a fictitious story set in the England of Henry IV. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Unusually for Hollywood, they actually make an effort to get things right historically, and broadswords are used as broadswords and not as rapiers. The weaponry and military techniques are pretty OK for a Hollywood film, and are, on the whole, accurate.The fight sequences are very exciting and, along with the training methods, are probably the best bits of the film.As to Tony Curtis's accent. Well, we have in Geoffrey Chaucer an authentic idea of what the English language in London was like in the early 15th century. It is ridiculous to write the script in Chaucerian English - not if you want to fill the cinemas, at any rate. Compare Tony Curtis in Black Shield with Olivier in Henry V. Is Olivier's accent any more correct or authentic? This is not the deepest film ever made, but there is plenty to enjoy about it.