Coat-and-sword film

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The coat-and-sword film is a sub-genre of adventure film . Typical of the genre are acrobatic choreographed sword fights and the resistance of individual protagonists against the representatives of state and clerical authorities. The fabrics often go back to adventure novels from the 19th century. The most prominent example of this is Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers . In 1919, another literary figure emerged with the figure of Zorro , who later became the focus of numerous coat-and-sword films.

features

As a rule, one or more heroes (" swashbucklers ") appear in coat-and-sword films who fight injustices, intrigues, and murders of certain groups ( nobility , church ) or individuals ( kings , cardinals , governors ) and for that Stand up for the right to freedom and justice. These heroes are usually portrayed as noble, daring, fair, selfless and intelligent, their opponents as greedy for power and money, eaten away by hatred, devious and also intelligent. Sometimes reference is made to an earlier bond between the heroes and their adversaries, which, however, has turned into enmity due to injustice inflicted. In this respect, there are also parallels to the archetypal figure of Robin Hood .

The action is mostly set either in the 17th and 18th centuries in France , England , Spain or Portugal and in the case of the " Zorro films " in Mexican California in the early 19th century. In times when a cape (a coat) was one of the usual items of clothing and the rapier (or rapier ) was widely used as a close combat weapon.

Films set in Europe

If coat-and-sword films are set in Europe, they often deal with the experiences and adventures of the Musketeers , the bodyguard of the French kings Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Often they go back to novels by Alexandre Dumas ( The Three Musketeers or The Man in the Iron Mask ). These templates were filmed in large numbers, and there were also some sequels and prequels that had little to do with the originals (for example, The Queen's Four Scoundrels or D'Artagnan's Daughter ). A popular character in the coat-and-sword film is “Fanfan the Hussar”, whose adventures originally written for the screen have been filmed several times. This applies to the figure of Scaramouche developed by Rafael Sabatini .

The coat-and-sword films reached their peak in the 1960s, when large US studios took up this genre and produced lavish films. From an artistic point of view, a French production was ambitious in this phase: Philippe de Brocas Cartouche, the Bandit (1962), who added a dark mood to the genre, which is permeated by humorous components. The coat and sword hero encounters emancipated and therefore equal partners in European cinema, such as with Gérard Philipe and his soothsayer Gina Lollobrigida in Fanfan, der Husar (1952), Albert Finney, his Susannah York in Tom Jones - between the bed and gallows (1963), Jacques Brel his Claude Jade in My uncle Benjamin (1969) and most recently Jean-Paul Belmondo its Marlène Jobert in The Married Couple of the Year Two (1971). In the French coat-and-sword film, the most famous heroes were Jean Marais and his successor Gérard Barray .

Similar to the Italian sandal films, the coat-and-epee film in France developed from the mid-1970s and in the 1980s increasingly into a wear-and-tear item and was hardly taken seriously. In the USA, as well as several British musketeer films by Richard Lester, contributed to this. Due to their star cast and opulent furnishings, they were commercially successful, their burlesque style had little in common with the characteristics of the genre: The protagonists were reminiscent of vulgar brawlers less of "noble" fighters for justice and honor.

Zorro films

For his penny novel The Curse of Capistrano ( The Curse of Capistrano ), published in 1919 , Johnston McCulley developed the character of Zorro, who in the first half of the 19th century in California, which was then still under Spanish, later Mexican rule, against the oppression of the Population fights by the governor Don Sebastian. Just one year later, this material was filmed for the first time with the silent film star Douglas Fairbanks in The Sign of Zorro . In the United States from the 1920s to 1940s Zorro was repeatedly held in the multi-part serial , those 30-minute supporting films before the main film.

Zorro comes from Spanish and means "(clever) fox". In the 1960s in particular, other Zorro films were made that made the title hero internationally known. Even more clearly than is the case with the coat-and-sword films with a European setting, the expression of Zorro relates to the Robin Hood motif. Nevertheless, this figure has a great independent meaning as an icon of popular culture. The figure of Batman is largely shaped by the motif of Zorro. After the production of Zorro films had declined in the 1980s, a commercially successful attempt to revive this material was undertaken in 1998 with The Mask of Zorro, which was largely positively received by film critics.

Well-known actors from coat-and-sword films

See also

literature