Action and Adventure Films

CLASSICAL CINEMA: HISTORICAL ADVENTURE

Within the classical period of American cinema, a variety of action and adventure types were produced, several achieving distinct generic status (the western, gangster, and war film pre-eminently). Setting aside for the moment these familiar action genres, we might consider the historical adventure film as the classical cinema's central manifestation of action and adventure. In his comprehensive study of the genre, Brian Taves suggests that historical adventure comprises five principal types which relate to the setting or activity associated with the major characters: swashbuckler, pirate, sea, empire, and fortune hunter. Of these, the swashbuckler is the most familiar, an adventure form associated with a hero who battles against unjust authority, displaying martial skills in extravagant scenes of swordplay, often combined with verbal wit. Though by no means associated with one studio alone, Warner Bros. notably generated a series of successful historical adventures featuring Errol Flynn (1909–1959), first as the eponymous hero in Captain Blood and subsequently in such titles as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). In the latter, both a commercial and critical success, Flynn was paired once more with female lead Olivia de Havilland (b. 1916). This Technicolor epic, with its spectacular sets and scenes of combat, built on Fairbanks's successes of the silent period. Flynn's Hood quips as he scales walls and fights in trees, atop tables, and on staircases, suggesting a hero equally at home in natural and human-made environments. Robin's good looks, hearty good humor, and martial skills position him as both one of the people and a leader of men, his virtues contrasted to the idle indulgence of most of the ruling class he opposes. Released on the eve of World War II, the film offered as explicit a condemnation of authoritarian regimes as was perhaps possible within the restrictions of the day. In its alignment with the Saxons, an oppressed group that has lost power (rather than never having had it), against the Normans, The Adventures of Robin Hood exploits the political impulses that Taves sees as central to the historical adventure, without ever needing to touch on the complexities of power and oppression within the United States itself. The historical adventure continued as a Hollywood staple through to the mid-1950s, showcasing various athletic, pin-up male stars, including Tyrone Power (1913–1958), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1909–2000), Burt Lancaster (1913–1994), and Stewart Granger (1913–1993). In turn, this tradition was revived in the 1970s, with films such as the American-British co-production of The Three Musketeers (1973), and has remained evident in later successes, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), hybridized with horror elements.

Many adventure films depict their protagonists journeying to or through a geographically and culturally distant landscape. Whether explicitly figured as the space of empire, or simply evoked as primitive, non-western ("other") worlds, adventure space typically exists to be conquered or in some way mastered. Its inhabitants are defined as inferior and/or threatening to the white/western adventurers who enter these sites. The Lost World , with its Amazon setting, can be framed in this way, as can various H. Rider Haggard adaptations, such as She (1935) and King Solomon's Mines (both novels have been filmed on numerous occasions, the latter again in 2004). Perhaps the best-known character to function within this type of adventure space is Tarzan, a character first filmed in the silent period ( Tarzan of the Apes , 1918) and forming a cinematic staple of the adventure film for decades. The former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller (1904–1984) portrayed Tarzan in a series of films, beginning with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932); subsequently, a number of other male stars and athletes portrayed the character in films featuring action sequences, an adventure setting, and a legitimate context in which to display near-naked bodies. The long-running cinematic success of the Tarzan story can be understood in terms of its deployment of a series of core action and adventure elements, which reassured viewers through white male dominance in an African landscape defined by its remoteness and racial difference. Such constructions are not limited to fantastic representations of Africa, of course; the construction of native American lands and peoples within the western may also be considered in this context—the much discussed John Ford film The Searchers (1956), for instance. As this suggests, sites closer to home may still be rendered as threatening, fantastic, and exotic within the codes of Hollywood adventure. Equally, though, the quest for empire may provide the explicit setting for war, as in the British action epic Zulu (1964); produced in a period defined by Britain's emerging post-imperial status, the

film depicts British forces as hopelessly outnumbered by Zulu opponents.