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d. Richard Lester; pr. Denis O'Dell; scr. James Goldman; ph. David Watkin; m. John Barry; ed. John Victor-Smith; cast. Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris, Nicol Williamson, Denholm Elliott, Ronnie Barker, Ian Holm (106 mins)

ROBIN & MARIAN FACTS: PROMOTION - Stressing the romantic nature of the story, the marketers decided on "Love is the greatest adventure of all." (read more); FILM TALES - Albert Finney was originally sought to play Robin Hood and Sean Connery to play Little John; Richard Harris agreed to appear in the film as a favour to Sean Connery, whom he had befriended during the filming of The Molly Maguires; Audrey Hepburn had taken a 9 year absence from the screen to raise her family before she was convinced to return for this film; noted composer Michel Legrand wrote a score for the movie but it was rejected, issued on CD in France in 2009 by Universal; At 44, Connery was the oldest actor ever to portray Robin Hood; SPONSOR DETAILS: This review ofRobin and Marian is sponsored by Inkstone Digital - the latest ebooks for as low as $8.95 with new titles added weekly (read more); Scrolling News Ticker by Mioplanet;

The legendary romance of Robin Hood and Maid Marian has been a perennially popular one in both American and British cinema, subject to seemingly constant re-invention and re-interpretation.

From Errol Flynn to anthropomorphic Disney animals to Kevin Costner, the great stars have attempted the glorious, righteous character of Robin Hood for continually audience-pleasing results. With such a popular history behind the characters, only rarely has there been a truly revisionist and iconoclastic treatment of the enduring legend. The often-forgotten film of Robin and Marian thus stands as perhaps the most notable exception, a truly unusual and highly effective debunking of the legend, done with an often bitterly sceptical regard for the much-beloved characters as romantic icons. Indeed, such debunking and debasement seems the iconoclastic intent here as American director Richard Lester (who built his directorial career in English cinema with the two seminal Beatles movies) took the “fun” he had in his hit version of The Three Musketeers and deepened its irreverence into a form of controlled spite, making Robin and Marian for much of its length an acidic film. It may even be Lester’s most acerbic movie: however, once it toys with mawkishness towards the end, the film becomes arguably uncomfortable tonally and as a result did not endear itself to many critics of the time.

Robin and Marian begins in a very far off land (the Middle East) towards the end of the Crusades, which are by now no longer a holy undertaking but the site of disenchantment and even mad folly.

Robin Hood (Sean Connery) and close friend Little John (Nicol Williamson) are disillusioned with service to their King, Richard the Lionheart (Richard Harris), who has become almost crazed in his pathological pseudo-religious quest. After being imprisoned, they secure their way back home to Sherwood Forest, although by now the two of them are middle-aged, almost lumbering, men. Despite what Connery wishes to believe, they are no longer the heroes they once were in their youth. Of course, once “home”, Connery’s thoughts shift to a former love, Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn). He finds much to his surprise that she has changed startlingly, dedicating herself to the service of God, but notes that she is once again in trouble with Connery’s former arch-enemy, the sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw). Connery makes off with Hepburn before Shaw can get her although Shaw realizes that a final showdown, long delayed, is now in the making. Slowly the former band of “merry men” starts to return to Sherwood Forest, intent on again serving Connery. Meanwhile, Shaw gathers his force and camps at the outskirts of the forest, slyly hoping to lure the increasingly impatient Connery into the open.

Connery in particular refuses to admit that he has gotten older and less capable. Emerging from the death of idealism in the Crusades, he takes up his former sanctuary and his former image: the decision of a man who realizes he has wasted his life and seeks to make amends by impossibly returning to his youth. The tragedy is complete when he sweeps Hepburn into his increasingly delusional grandeur: a psychosis that momentarily entrances Hepburn although it is she who intuits the impossibility of the predicament and the horrid realization that this great romance is a failure. The film takes such ironic joy in reaching this point that it is unsure of how to resolve the issue of the fate of the legends, offering an event both mawkish and pathetic as a demonstration of the mad folly of romantic delusion. But for most of its length, the film is a sustained attack on Robin Hood as a great romantic hero, showing instead a misguided fool who shoots people in the back. With much humour about the characters’ years and their stubborn denial of both age and experience, the film is a thoroughly revisionist take on the material, systematically robbing the characters of any glory they may have once had.

To compound the sense of futility that thus underlines much of the humour, director Lester is keen to insist on the point that the suffering that Robin Hood once reacted against has only doubled in his absence.

Thus, Connery is forced to confront the fact that his life has served no purpose, a fact he cannot reconcile to his romantic self-image as a man of consequence. The result is a kind of Monty Python-esque humour and daydreaming amidst squalor. The desperation Connery feels is finally too much for him to bear. Just as Hepburn initially sees no glory in Connery’s private rebellion so too director Lester sees no heroism in the actions and seeks to explore the middle-aged psychosis that is behind this doomed predicament, leading to the most ironic of endings. Connery plays a proud fool, wanting to be convinced of his own greatness but needing both an unquestioning Marian and his opposition to Shaw in order to reinforce this. Rather than resort to the challenge of saving the poor, his ambitions are entirely selfish. Yet Lester is not kinder to any of the characters, depicting King John as a virtual paedophile and Marian as a woman torn between reliving her youth and destroying it, finally driven to the most desperate of actions. This iconoclastic re-interpretation of romantic glory reaches a cynicism unmatched in the entire Robin Hood ethos, making the film stand out surprisingly well from other versions.

Vision
The 16:9 enhanced transfer is initially true to the flashy, fragmentary and deliberately jarring style that is a hallmark of Lester’s earlier films, although here he is less flamboyant than in his pioneering 1960s work: as if the director has tempered his enthusiasm with the film’s evident cynicism. Locations are frequently well used, the film at the start coming off like a kind of Medieval Western before returning to Sherwood Forest, which appropriately seems inhospitable and ruined rather than lushly mystical or primeval. In its visual design, the film emphasizes the muddy physicality of the land and the people although Lester at times cannot resist some clever narrative exposition through the succession of visual textures as Connery rediscovers his homeland in bad shape. The desperate, despairing poverty of these people fills in the background here, although in Lester’s control it only reinforces the notion that the supposedly great adventurer Connery can ignore it in his renewed vainglorious selfishness. Autumnal, cold and earthen colours thus dominate although the transfer is nicely clean and clear overall, despite some faltering backgrounds. The fight scenes are deliberately laboured, unglamorous and even awkward and graceless, so stripped of all but false heroism is this slyly cynical movie, a nice companion piece to Lester’s further debunking of Connery’s image in the later film of Cuba.

Sound
The sound transfer is equally efficient but is available in Dolby Digital mono only and with such limitations is unable to adjust to home theatre precision. It is competent and detailed enough on occasion to stress the indifference and inhospitability of nature (the cold wind as they arrive in Sherwood for instance) and there is a sense of barren-ness despite the green forest. Correspondingly, it is as though the voices must compete with each other not to be overwhelmed by a natural sullenness. The mix is thus mostly flat and centred as the most prominent sounds nicely, even slyly, emphasize the notion of physical and spiritual desolation (hence, horses upon a rocky path are contrasted to the false reassurance of the muddy earth in Sherwood). The score by veteran John Barry manages to be nicely sentimental, giving a bittersweet notion of romantic futility to counterbalance the wry humour of director Lester: it is both an evocative reminder of romantic myth and a complement to its debunking. The score is rotund but not fleshed out enough in this transfer. The woods themselves can thus only manage a mild presence, the point perhaps being that they offer little real solace and finally only an illusory sense of any community. The sound mix captures the despairing search for impossible romantic triumph that lies at the film’s core but such deliberate austerity is only limitedly served by the mono transfer.

In the way of special features are the trailers for Robin and Marian (which hyped up Hepburn’s return to the screen after a long absence) and, rather arbitrarily really, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.