Scaramouche

One of the lesser known action-adventure films of the golden age of Hollywood, but definitely one worth celebrating. Filled with lush scenery, vivid Technicolor, wonderful performances from Stewart Granger, Eleanor Parker and Mel Ferrer, and some of the best on-screen swordfighting you will ever see, "Scaramouche" is I feel unjustly ignored. Packed with action, comedy and romance the film suffers from not having an iconic film star at its center like Errol Flynn, but really this is a disservice. While it is true, Stewart Granger is no Errol Flynn, he plays the role of the charming scoundrel Andre Moreau with plenty of Flynn's trademark charisma and bravado. This is really the only guess I can hazard as to why this film is not recognized as one of the great action-adventure spectacles of Old Hollywood, on an equal plane with such classics as "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "The Mark of Zorro". MGM clearly spared no expense in the making of this film, featuring elaborate sets in addition to the several extended location shots peppered throughout the film. The large theater set in particular, centerpiece to the film's incredible duel climax, is an amazing feat of the studio's famed art direction department. Thus it should come as no surprise that legendary art director Cedric Gibbons worked on this film, further establishing it as a film MGM had full faith in, and making its mostly forgotten status today even more puzzling.

Following the superhero archetype, the film begins with Andre Moreau as a scheming, ne'er do well. He is a playboy and a fop, who lives only for women and fine clothes, and cares not for politics and justice. However, when he gets a lesson firsthand in how France is being oppressed by the aristocracy, he vows to change his ways and fight. What happens specifically is the murder of his young friend, Phillippe de Valmorin, a young idealist who had been publishing anti-aristocracy tracts under the pseudonym Marcus Brutus. When his identity is exposed by the cruel Marquis de Maynes, the Queen's cousin and chief henchman, he kills the woefully overmatched Valmorin in a duel with Andre looking on. Andre foolishly attempts to avenge his friend's death then and there, and the Marquis would have killed him, but Andre is able to escape. Andre knows that he cannot hope to defeat the Marquis without any sword fighting instruction, and in a stroke of "movies" good fortune it so happens that the Marquis' instructor, Doutreval of Dijon, is sympathetic to the rebel cause and agrees to give Andre lessons in secret. While making progress, Andre also keeps tabs on two beautiful women in his life, Lenore, his on-again-off-again girlfriend and Aline de Gavrillac, a young woman Andre believes to be his sister. Despite constantly appealing to Lenore whenever he needs a favor (in the film's inspired comedic subplot, Andre hides himself from the Marquis by assuming the masked role of the ugly clown Scaramouche in the theater troupe Lenore is a part of. Featuring several extended sequences with Stewart Granger performing as Scaramouche, the film offers an effective respite to the more significant revenge plot, and Granger displays remarkable comedic touch), Andre finds himself strangely drawn to his "sister" and sneaks away to see her as often as is safe, and sometimes when it is not.

Nearly confident in his dueling abilities, the Marquis discovers that Doutreval has been teaching his mortal enemy and while Andre puts up more of a fight in their second duel, the Marquis still overwhelms him, in a furious succession of moves in which he leaves Andre vulnerable and embaressed. Again, Andre is able to escape, this time thanks to Aline's distraction, and he seeks out Doutreval's tutor, Perigore of Paris. Fleeing to Paris with the help of Lenore, who convinces the entire troupe to relocate, enabling Andre to keep his cover, Andre finishes his instruction and begins killing off the Marquis' men in a series of duels. Finally revealing himself to the Marquis the two square off in an amazing extended sequence in which they fight throughout an elaborate theater, from the boxes overhanging the orchestra, to behind the scenes, to the main stairwell in the theater's glorious lobby. The swordplay is exceptional, Granger and Ferrer must have trained for months, and the conclusion is riveting as Andre finally bests his enemy. Overcome with a strange sensation of compassion, Andre cannot bring himself to kill the Marquis, and when he learns the truth, realizes why. It turns out that Andre, who did not know his true origin, having believed he was orphaned and adopted by a wealthy family as a child, was really brother to the Marquis, and that the woman he thought was his sister, Aline, was blood relation to his adopted father. Having spared the Marquis, who is incarcerated for his role in the tyrannical government regime, Andre is also free to marry Aline, the woman he felt oddly compelled to, and as the film ends they receive a bouquet from Lenore, who has set her sights on another member of the government, a rising young general in the army: Napoleon. The surreal ending aside (it plays hilariously though), the film is a wonderful MGM technicolor adventure and deserves a better legacy than the one it presently has.