Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

greenforest56 The production values of this picture are excellent. You can tell from the sets and costumes a lot of money was spent. The great weakness of this film is the script and acting technique. The script is straight 19th century maudlin melodrama. Unfortunately, the acting technique is the same. Lines are delivered in a stilted, formal manner common to the stage of an earlier era instead of the more natural technique we are accustomed to seeing in film today. The 30's was indeed a transition period in acting technique: the over wrought melodramatic technique of the silent pictures and stage in the early thirties to the natural technique finally adopted in the late 30's. Of course, the plot itself is implausibly melodramatic "love conquers all" for "world peace" kind of thing. Still, for a film student its still worth watching for the fine directing.

hundd44 Nobody ever accused DeMille of painstaking historical accuracy - his films are far more the type to set the mood and tell a good story with a historical period as a background. "The Crusades" is a prime example - historically Richard the Lionheart was a lousy king of England who barely spent a year in England during his entire reign - to him, England was merely a source for taxes and troops so he fight the his continental wars. The opening scene of the movie when the Chrisitians captured at Jerusalem are being sold into slavery (with the obligatory Muslim leering at the blonde Christian beauties) is also historically suspect. Saladin and his generals expected the Christian nobility that was captured at Jerusalem to ransom the common people prisoners. When they didn't, Saladin and his generals were so disgusted at such a lack of concern that they ended up ransoming many of the commoners themselves - supposedly Saladin personally ransomed several hundred so they could return to Europe. But I digress.This is a movie which contains a scene that has stayed with me for several decades. I doubt if it would play well today - I can't think of any actors who could pull it off. The scene is where the Christian leaders of the Crusade meet Saladin for the first time when Saladin comes to warn them to go back to Europe. The various Kings, dukes, et al are all seated and listen to Saladin's message. Richard the Lionheart then steps up and tells Saladin that the Christians aren't afraid, that their armies are powerful and to illustrate his point he has two servants hold an iron mace while he proceeds to cleave it in two with his sword. An impressive display of the strength of his blade. But Saladin has a priceless response. He walks over to Berengaria and asks if he can have her silk veil. He takes the veil, tosses it into the air, and then pulls his own sword and positions it below the falling veil, blade up. The veil falls onto the blade and is cut in two by its own weight - for this was a famed Damascus blade. Saladin's point - brute strength isn't everything. Of course, all of the Christian nobles just drop their mouths in utter shock at the demonstration. A priceless scene - and an illustration of the "little things" that separate a humdrum film from one you enjoy watching time and time again.

MARIO GAUCI To begin with, being a fan of the epic genre, I had always wanted to check this one out and, in fact, was very pleased when Universal released it as part of their 5-Disc Cecil B. De Mille collection; however, since I already owned both THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932) and CLEOPATRA (1934) via TCM showings, I kept postponing the purchase of this set – until I acquired the lot through a friend of my father's! Having been duly impressed with those two De Mille spectaculars, I had intended to watch this immediately (I got the film around the middle of last year) but for various reasons – I even had to exclude it from my Christmas viewing – I could only get to it now that Easter is approaching! Incidentally, the 5th of March happened to mark the centenary from the birth of actor Rex Harrison, who had starred as Saladin (the villainous 'infidel' of THE CRUSADES) in KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS (1954), which I recorded off Italian TV (even if I had already watched it and in spite of its poor reputation) expressly for the purpose of accompanying my viewing of De Mille's film! Anyway, THE CRUSADES is another notable achievement (from the days prior to the epic heyday of the 1950s and 1960s) which goes to prove – yet again – that De Mille was perhaps cinema's greatest purveyor of hokum disguised as inspirational art for the masses (even if this particular example, reportedly, flopped at the box-office).The central relationship between gorgeous Loretta Young (such strong female presences abound in the director's work) and De Mille regular Henry Wilcoxon (an unusually handsome, and Godless, Richard the Lionheart – amusingly referred to by Saladin as "The Lion King"!) goes through some interesting, yet oddly believable, tangents during the course of the film. Starting off in antagonistic vein more typical of then-current screwball comedies (he even prefers carousing with his men to their wedding ceremony, where his place is eventually taken by the royal sword!), it develops into one that borders on amour fou – which could jeopardize the outcome of the whole crusade (it's actually comparable to the bond-to-the-death between Roman centurion Fredric March and Christian slave Elissa Landi in the earlier THE SIGN OF THE CROSS)! The excellent supporting cast includes, among others, Ian Keith (as Saladin), Joseph Schildkarut (typically sneaky as one of the Christian rulers), C. Henry Gordon (as the French King, whose sister Katharine De Mille – the director's adopted daughter – Richard has deliberately spurned), Alan Hale (as Richard's minstrel/sidekick, a Little John type that would soon become his trademark), C. Aubrey Smith (as the old hermit who is challenged by the overly confident Saladin at the beginning of the picture to rally the Christian countries in a crusade against his forces and, later, made hostage and chained to a cross to bar passage to the advancing army, he asks Richard to proceed with the attack regardless!) and Mischa Auer (in an early role as a monk).While the script obviously eschews the Robin Hood legend that has become associated with Richard and the Crusades (the Douglas Fairbanks version of 1922 about that popular outlaw figure, in fact, spends more time with him as a knight than the proverbial 'Merrie Man'!), subtlety is still the last thing one would hope to find in a De Mille pageant. In fact, Young's abduction by the Muslims (with her dressed as a sentry in a suicidal bid to end the discord between the various royals!) is pretty contrived; similarly, the fact that Young is contended in the terms laid down by Saladin for the truce with the Christian world is pure Hollywood. With this in mind, the dialogue (co-written by Dudley Nichols) is consciously stilted throughout – albeit featuring such good lines as Saladin's defiant claim to the monarchs gathered in their tent, "There is room enough in Asia to bury all of you!" Made after the dreaded (and stifling) Hays Code came into force, it's not as bloodthirsty as the afore-mentioned THE SIGN OF THE CROSS – even so, the battle scenes are quite realistic (with the clanging of heavy steel being heard as the opposing armies clash in a confusion of warriors and horses) and may well have influenced Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander NEVSKY (1938). There is one evident display of viciousness here on an isolated member of Schildkraut's treacherous army as a clutch of Muslim riders (appearing on the scene to rescue the cornered Wilcoxon at the instigation of Saladin himself, in the hope of thus winning Young's love) fall on him en masse with their spears. Boasting superlative photography (Victor Milner's work in this capacity presented the film with its sole Oscar nomination) and massive crowd scenes, the film survives as tremendous entertainment even after all these years. Incidentally, it seemed common practice in spectacles of the era to provide villains of the Muslim persuasion – as can be gathered from the likes of ABDUL THE DAMNED (1935; a British production I first watched over Christmas), THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935), THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1936) and GUNGA DIN (1939).

raskimono The name De Mille evokes big sets, big costumes and bigger action and Crusades was his follow up to his earlier take on Christian oration from the scandalous - in a good way - Sign of the cross. Henry Wilcoxson, his Marc Anthony of Cleopatra and the always beautiful Loretta Young team up in this extravagant epic. King Richard the Lionheart is not a Christian and is not faithful to the ways of the sign of the cross but to escape a forced marriage he signs up for the Crusades to free the holy city of Jerusalem. Of course, there is scheming behind his back to seize his throne while he is gone. Along the way he trades for a wife, Loretta and haggles and argues with his other European leaders. Now, it has often not be said for it is almost as if De Mille build big sets and big stories to tell little moments for all his excess, his movies are ridiculously dialogue driven, even by the standards of the other expensive blockbuster-type movies made back then. De Mille loved dialogue scenes and focusing on character. Very strange. And this movie is really a politics and character movie as the future of Europe is argued and royal pompous exposed. The action sequences are obvious studio sets but well shot. The final moments have good heart that is not forced but earned. Thus, is this a good movie. It is hard to say because for every good scene there is a juvenile scene obviously put in to satiate the masses. Good direction though, very good direction. That said, Crusades lost money when first released, if you only look at its Domestic boxoffice rentals but was the biggest grossing movie of its year.