Tsk, Tsk, Tsk! How Vexatious!

And once again (finally) we return to my delightfully (ahem) long-winded look at the growth of the Zorro character as a legend and a franchise. You can read everything so far here, here, aaaaand here.

Between the silent exploits of Douglas Fairbanks and 1940’s remake of The Mark of Zorro there were a good number of serials featuring the character. From what I’ve heard they were pretty uniformly awful, and I haven’t bothered to hunt them down. You’ll see similar neglect when I skip ahead a good 50 or so years after this one, entirely bypassing the 1950’s television show. Sorry, but I’m sticking with what’s good and/or relevant to myself, and I didn’t grow up watching the show (I’m only 23, and didn’t have cable as a child).

Anyway, onwards to Tyrone Power’s wonderful turn as Diego de la Vega/Zorro in The Mark of Zorro. Plot-wise, this film has very little in common with either Johnston McCulley’s original book or Douglas Fairbanks’ first movie–that is, other than being about Zorro as he fights the corrupt and oppressive government of colonial California.

This iteration of the legend definitely sets up the rather populist bent of the concept a little better. While the corrupt Alcalde (or Governor) of Los Angeles, Luis Quintero, is mostly shown as a bumbling idiot, before we actually meet him we’re treated to a series of early scenes in which local peasants cower in fear at the mere mention of him. One of them is even mute, due to having had his tongue cut out for speaking up. This all stacks the deck a bit more politically, as our Zorro this time out ends up working to genuinely change the local government. It helps that Quintero has a much more competent and frightening right-hand man in the manipulative (and, at times, probably more in charge) Esteban Pasquale, played by one of the screen’s greatest villains and fencers: the inimitable Basil Rathbone (left).

When I was a child watching old swashbucklers with Rathbone as the villain, I would always, of course, spend the bulk of the movie wishing that I were Erroll Flynn or Tyrone Power… but I would undoubtedly spend at least a couple minutes perversely imagining that I was the insidious and magnetic Rathbone. He was always a great presence.

The real star of the show, however, is indeed Tyrone Power, naturally. Since Power was a matinee idol whose looks were a strong draw, (don’t discount his acting abilities, though) the film spends a good deal of time on Diego instead of Zorro, which is just fine. The use of sound, dialogue, and some witty writing allows for the dual identity hero to really be quite hilarious. Instead of simply ineffectual, Diego is utterly effeminate–probably as much so as was allowable in a film of the time. To throw his enemies, and his own family, off the scent of who he really is, our hero soliloquizes about linens and perfumes, partakes in silly magic tricks (like Fairbanks), complains of tepid bathwater (which must also be scented), remains perpetually exhausted, and gives the most dead-fished of handshakes. It all works beautifully.

In contrast to the persona that Diego crafts for himself, this version of Zorro may be the most frightening to date. He doesn’t simply humiliate soldiers and save damsels; the masked man is truly a bandit in this film. He robs men and women at gun and sword-point, (only those corrupt ones who deserve it, of course) barking threats and sounding as though he really would be willing to kill them where they stand if they don’t comply. Of course, being our hero, he never does murder anyone who’s unarmed… but we begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he would. He is also perfectly willing to beat a man half to death and carve a huge Z into his chest… a far cry from playfully putting Z’s onto the seat of a comedic villain’s pants, like in the later television show.

The more bandit-looking Zorro mask to the left there is only used in a scene or two, as though the character is trying to figure out what works best as he goes along. It’s a nice idea, except that soon after he robs the Alcalde in that mask, he makes a death-threat to the same man in the more conventional Zorro mask that covers the top half of the face. You would think that if one saw both halves of the same man’s face they could piece together who that man was, but ah well.

So our Zorro fights the evil Governor and falls in love with said Governor’s beautiful niece, all while acting so ineffectual that his own parents, and said beautiful girl, find Diego to be the most frustrating man possible. We get a couple of great action scenes (the action movie as a concept kind of disappeared after the silent era, up until the 1980’s or so, so the movie isn’t filled with major set-pieces) including one breathtaking escape that still leaves me wondering how the filmmakers actually got a horse to do that. There are also many great bits of humor and intrigue, all leading up to one of the most dizzying and exciting one-on-one swordfights on film. It doesn’t quite match Rathbone and Flynn’s incredible clash at the end of The Adventures of Robin Hood (a movie that Mark of Zorro is clearly trying to emulate) but it comes damned close.

The movie continues a bit after said duel, but honestly it’s the real highlight. The actual climax is still pretty fun, and I can’t help but feel that its looking, essentially, like a peasant revolt helped to shape the politics of my own young little mind, once upon a time.

While there are definitely some instances of goofily over the top dialogue, and one dance sequence that is supposed to ooze sexuality but is forced much too far into a tame vein to do so, this film is undoubtedly one of the greatest classic swashbucklers around. In some ways I would even go so far as to say that it’s closer to the iconic picture that we now have of Zorro than Fairbanks’ original… but only because it’s closer to that iconic picture than anything else I’ve ever come across.

See it. End of story.