Swashbuckling Cinema Part I

Warner Bros. In the late 1930’s had also, while engaging with social issues, maintained an eye for bringing family friendly adventure stories to the cinema. In this case, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). This film provided the company with an opportunity to take a beloved character that people could see and “aspire to be” and make it extremely cinematically relevant with Warner Bros. Staple style of filmmaking via their notably fast paced cutting and lush cinematography highlighting visual variety (Schreiber, 66). Many shots in the film seek to highlight the necessity of the individual star, keeping in tune with the studio systems’ agenda for creating perfected social silhouettes in the form of actors for people to idolize. With this film, we can note shots of Errol Flynn (Robin Hood) staring deep into the distant land, this can be interpreted by the viewer as the individual who sees more to life than the accustomed poverty that the characters in the film were acclimated to, moreover, that the viewers who went to see the film were all too familiar with (Schreiber, 67). Furthermore, while the film offered pleasant spectacle for escapism, it simultaneously spoke to the “economic sensibilities” of audiences at the time, which has been a key, genre transcending feature of Warner Bros. Catalogue throughout this decade (Conrad, 2). The swashbuckling wildness of the plot mostly served as an enjoyable backdrop to the struggles that people faced financially and would continue to grapple in years after the film’s release. The “slick entertainment virtues” attributed to Warner Bros. In the decade was, with film’s subtext in mind, more of a distraction from the truth of the film tackling where the singular individual stands in relation to one’s immediate social and economic surroundings (Hark, 2013). This film along with many others within the studio’s catalogue is evidently showcasing the social relevance that film maintains within society, specifically during the era in which this one along with many others was released, alluding to other genres as has been previously mentioned in this blog through the grittiness of the crime genre, furthermore, the lighthearted spectacle of the musical and/or the fun adventure film starring Errol Flynn. Constantly highlighting societal struggles, this film illuminates more of a heroic, individualistic fantasy, accompanied with fast-paced editing that had consistently driven viewers to the cinema and kept the ideal of Warner Bros. As the most socially conscious studio of the time well intact.