Ivanhoe (1952 film)

Ivanhoe
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Richard Thorpe
Produced by	Pandro S. Berman
Screenplay by	Æneas MacKenzie Noel Langley Marguerite Roberts
Based on	Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Starring	Robert Taylor Elizabeth Taylor Joan Fontaine George Sanders Emlyn Williams Felix Aylmer Finlay Currie
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography	Freddie Young
Edited by	Frank Clarke
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	July 31, 1952 (1952-07-31) (United States)
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United Kingdom United States
Language	English
Budget	$3,842,000[1]
Box office	$10,878,000[1]

Joan Fontaine in Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe is a 1952 historical adventure drama film directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Pandro S. Berman for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was shot in Technicolor, with a cast featuring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Emlyn Williams, Finlay Currie, and Felix Aylmer. The screenplay is written by Æneas MacKenzie, Marguerite Roberts, and Noel Langley, based on the 1820 historical novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.

The film was the first in what turned out to be an unofficial trilogy made by the same director and producer and star, Robert Taylor. The others were Knights of the Round Table (1953) and The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955). All three were made at MGM's British Studios at Elstree, near London.

In 1951, the year of production, one of the screenwriters, Marguerite Roberts, was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and MGM received permission from the Screen Writers Guild to remove her credit from the film.

Plot

Richard the Lionheart (Norman Wooland), King of England, vanishes while returning from the Crusades. One of his knights, the Saxon Wilfred of Ivanhoe (Robert Taylor), searches tirelessly for him, finally finding him being held by Leopold of Austria for an enormous ransom. Richard's treacherous brother, Prince John (Guy Rolfe), knows about it, but enjoys ruling in his absence.

Ivanhoe returns to England to his estranged father, Cedric (Finlay Currie), to be reunited with his love and Cedric's ward, the Lady Rowena (Joan Fontaine), and to beg his father's help in raising the ransom. Cedric refuses to help a Norman king and orders his son to leave. Wamba (Emlyn Williams), Cedric's court jester, begs to go with Ivanhoe and is made his squire.

Two separate parties of travellers arrive and are granted Cedric's hospitality: a Jew, Isaac of York (Felix Aylmer), and Norman knights Brian de Bois-Guilbert (George Sanders) and Hugh de Bracy (Robert Douglas), and their entourage. That night, two Normans try to rob Isaac, but are foiled by Ivanhoe. Not feeling safe, Isaac decides to return home to Sheffield; Ivanhoe offers to escort him there.

When they reach Isaac's home, Ivanhoe secures his help in raising the ransom by promising better treatment for the Jews once Richard returns. Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor), Isaac's daughter, visits Ivanhoe secretly in the night to reward him for rescuing her father; she gives him jewels to purchase arms and a horse for an important upcoming joust. She falls in love with him, despite the great social gulf between them.

Nearly everyone of note is at the tournament, including Prince John. Norman knights loyal to him defeat all comers. Just when it seems that they are victorious, a mysterious Saxon knight appears, arrayed all in black, with white trim, his face hidden behind his visor. He does not give his name, but challenges all five Norman champions. He easily defeats the first three, Malvoisin, Ralph, and Front de Boeuf (Francis de Wolff), one after the other, and also wins the fourth bout against de Bracy, but is seriously wounded in the shoulder. His identify is guessed by some. When Ivanhoe salutes Rebecca, Bois-Guilbert is immediately smitten by her beauty. In the last joust against Bois-Guilbert, Ivanhoe falls from his horse. He is carried off, to be tended to by Rebecca.

Fearing Prince John's wrath, the Saxons depart; Ivanhoe is taken to the woods under the protection of Robin Hood (Harold Warrender). The rest make for the city of York, but are captured and taken to the castle of Front de Boeuf. When Ivanhoe hears the news, he gives himself up in exchange for his father's freedom. However, the Normans treacherously keep them both. Robin Hood's men storm the castle. In the fighting, de Boeuf drives Wamba to his death in a burning part of the castle and is slain in turn by Ivanhoe. Bois-Guilbert alone escapes, using Rebecca as a human shield, while de Bracy is captured after attempting the same with Rowena.

Meanwhile, the enormous ransom is finally collected, but the Jews face a cruel choice: free either Richard or Rebecca, for Prince John has set the price of her life at 100,000 marks, the Jews’ contribution. Isaac chooses Richard. Ivanhoe promises Isaac that he will rescue Rebecca.

At Rebecca's trial, she is condemned to be burned at the stake as a witch, but Ivanhoe appears and challenges the verdict, invoking the right to "wager of battle." Prince John chooses Bois-Guilbert as the court's champion. Bois-Guilbert makes a last desperate plea to Rebecca:, he would forfeit the duel in return for her love, though he would be forever disgraced. She refuses, saying, "We are all in God's hands, sir knight."

In the battle to the death, Ivanhoe is unhorsed, but manages to pull Bois-Guilbert from his horse and inflict a mortal wound with his battle axe. As he lies dying, Bois-Guilbert tells Rebecca that it is he who loves her, not Ivanhoe. Rebecca acknowledges this to Rowena.

King Richard and his knights arrive to reclaim the throne from his brother. The King calls on his kneeling people to rise, not as Normans or Saxons, but as Englishmen.

Cast

Production

In 1951 the film's main scriptwriter, Marguerite Roberts, was ordered to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where she and her husband, John Sanford, cited the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions about whether they had been members of the American Communist Party. Consequently, they were both blacklisted,^[2] and MGM received permission from the Screen Writers Guild to remove Roberts' credit from the film. It would take nine years before she was allowed to work in Hollywood again.^[3] (Roberts had already completed another screenplay for an MGM film, The Girl Who Had Everything. It was released early in 1953, but she wasn't credited.)^[2]

Scenes were filmed on soundstages at MGM-British Studios, Borehamwood, Herts, and on location at Doune Castle, Scotland.^[4] Both the Ashby-de-la-Zouch tournament and the Torquilstone Castle siege were shot on the large Borehamwood backlot. Woodland scenes were shot in Ashridge Forest, Herts and Bucks.

Music

Miklos Rozsa's score is one of his most highly-regarded, and it received both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. However, the composer was deeply disappointed with the film's treatment of Scott's novel, as he explained in his 1982 autobiography:

The music of Quo Vadis established me as a composer of 'epic' scores. I became apparently a specialist in historical pictures, much to my delight. Whether a film was good or bad, the subject was invariably interesting and worth spending time on.

Such a film was Ivanhoe. The book was a favourite of my youth, in Hungarian translation, of course. I re-read my Scott and was again delighted. When I read the script I was less delighted. It was a typical Hollywood historical travesty and the picture for the most part was cliche-ridden and conventional. So I turned back to Scott, and Scott it was, rather than Robert or even Elizabeth Taylor, who inspired my music.

In Ivanhoe I went back to mediaeval musical sources...^[5]

In an interview with Bruce Duffie in 1987 Rozsa identified some of these medieval sources:

The various themes in Ivanhoe are partly based on authentic Twelfth Century music, or at least influenced by them. Under the opening narration I introduced a theme from a ballad actually written by Richard the Lionhearted. The principle Norman theme I developed from a Latin hymn by the troubadour Giraut de Bornelh. This appears the first time with the approaching Normans in Sherwood Forest. Later during the film it undergoes various contrapuntal treatments. The love theme for Ivanhoe and Rowena is a free adaptation of an old popular song from the north of France. The manuscript of this I found in a collection of songs in the Royal Library of Brussels. It's a lovely melody, breathing the innocently amorous atmosphere of the middle ages, and I gave it modal harmonizations. Rebecca needed a Jewish theme, reflecting not only the tragedy of this beautiful character but also the persecution of her race. Fragments of medieval Jewish motives suggested a melody to me. My most difficult job was the scoring of the extensive battle in the castle because the producers wanted music to accompany almost all of it. I devised a new theme for the Saxons, along with a motive for the battering ram sequence, thereby giving a rhythmic beat which contrapuntally and polytonally worked out with the previous thematic material, forming a tonal background to this exciting battle scene. Scoring battles in films is very difficult, and sadly one for which the composer seldom gets much credit. The visuals and the emotional excitement are so arresting that the viewer tends not to be aware that he or she is also being influenced by what is heard.^[6]

Reception

Differences from Scott's novel

• The film omits the characters Gurth the Swineherd, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, Ulrica of Torquilstone, Lucas Beaumanoir (Grand Master of the Templars) and Prior Aymer of Jorvaulx, while it introduces a company of crusaders who do not appear in the novel. Ivanhoe's early injuries are rapidly healed, and he plays a very active part during the siege of Torquilstone Castle. Unlike the novel, King Richard is not involved until the final scene, when he and his crusader knights ride in. In the novel, Rebecca is tried and sentenced by the Templars, not by Prince John.

• In the film -- surprisingly, in view of the character's 1950s hero status -- Ivanhoe surreptitiously kills two Normans during the siege of Torquilstone. He stabs one (a sentry) in the back with a dagger and shoots the other (a squire) in the back with a crossbow bolt. (In an American Western of this period that would violate the implicit principle that only a villain 'shoots a man in the back'.) Nothing similar happens in the novel, in which Ivanhoe is the epitome of chivalry -- in Chaucer's phrase, 'a very perfect gentle knight'. (Both incidents were dropped from the comic book versions, below.)

• In the novel, Ivanhoe is described as 'a young man of twenty-five...[with] a profusion of short fair hair' [Ch XII]. (Scott doesn't make it clear if he's clean-shaven, mustached, or bearded. Most illustrators have shown him as one of the first two.) In the film, Robert Taylor is dark-haired, bearded, and looks ten years older. He is still knightly and handsome, but he isn't as Scott describes the character.

• Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert is represented as a layman, a secular Norman knight, not as a Knight Templar. (The Templars were military monks, bound by a rule of celibacy. There is no reference to the Templars in the film.) Scott describes him as 'a man past forty...[with] thick black moustaches...a deep scar on his brow...one of his eyes...slightly injured' [Ch II]. George Sanders, at forty-five, was the right age, but his hair and beard were brown and he had no facial scar or injured eye.

• The novel's Sir Maurice de Bracy is called Sir Hugh De Bracy in the film. Like Bois-Guilbert, he appears as a Norman knight returning from the Crusades. In the novel he is one of Prince John's mercenaries, or Free Companions.

• Ivanhoe assumes the role of the 'Black Knight' (the disguised King Richard in the novel) as well as being the Disinherited Knight. He also assumes the role of the minstrel Blondel, the legendary discoverer of the location of King Richard's imprisonment, who does not appear in the novel.

• In the film a ransom is being collected for King Richard. When the novel opens, King Richard has already been ransomed.

• Wamba the Jester (in whom the book's characters of Wamba and Gurth are combined) does not die in the novel, as he does in the film.

• In the novel, 'Locksley' is revealed as Robin Hood and the 'Clerk of Copmanhurst' is revealed as Friar Tuck. In the film their true identities are never mentioned. In fact, the clerk appears as a layman, not a churchman. However, Sebastian Cabot's clerk is made up to resemble the Friar Tuck of Willard Louis in Douglas Fairbanks' 1922 Robin Hood.

• The film includes Rebecca and her father, Isaac, in King Richard's climactic statement that all are "for England." At the end of the novel the two leave England, overwhelmed by Rebecca's ordeal and by the strength of hatred for the Jews.

• In the film, King Richard is imprisoned throughout in Austria -- not in Germany, where he spent most of his enforced exile.

Comic Book adaptions

• Fawcett Movie Comic #20 (December 1952)^[9]. 32 pages in full colour, artist unknown. [ It's notable, though ironic, that both the front cover and page one carry the credit "Screen Play by MARGUERITE ROBERTS and NOEL LANGLEY". ]

• Sun (Weekly picture paper • Amalgamated Press • London) No177, 28 June 1952 - No197, 15 November 1952. 21 issues, 42 pages in full colour. Drawn by Patrick Nicolle.^[10] [ Remarkably faithful to the look of the film. However, like the above, it includes an incident not in the film: at the beginning of the story a mounted Austrian soldier challenges Ivanhoe and is defeated. This was either in the script but not shot or it was shot but removed from the final cut. ]

References

External links

• Ivanhoe on IMDb
• Ivanhoe at the TCM Movie Database
• Ivanhoe at AllMovie
• Ivanhoe at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Ivanhoe at Rotten Tomatoes