The War Lord (1965)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Charlton Heston, Richard Boone, Rosemary Forsyth, Guy Stockwell, Maurice Evans
Synopsis:
The Duke of Ghent sends his trusty baron Chrysagon to hold a remote marshy tract of his lands that is occupied by primitive Celts and raided periodically by Frisians. He incurs the hostility of the locals when he arrogates the droit de seigneur over a peasant girl he is smitten by, and they stir up the Frisians against him.
Review:
Despite being compromised by a creaky script in places and a substandard medieval-style score by Jerome Moross, this vivid reconstruction of an eleventh century settlement and Norman keep is a superb piece of production design and expressively shot in pastel hues by Russell Metty. Heston and Forsyth are both excellent in their pregnant silences, and Boone is just a natural in this kind of thing. There is a feeling at the end of anti-climax (after so much blood-letting he hands over the Frisian prince from a position of strength) and lack of resolution (he is apparently mortally wounded and yet he sends the girl away to the north to live among the Frisians and undertakes a long and arduous journey back to the Duke). Nevertheless this a handsome picture which conveys something of life in the middle ages.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Charlton Heston, Richard Boone, Rosemary Forsyth, Guy Stockwell, Maurice Evans
Synopsis:
The Duke of Ghent sends his trusty baron Chrysagon to hold a remote marshy tract of his lands that is occupied by primitive Celts and raided periodically by Frisians. He incurs the hostility of the locals when he arrogates the droit de seigneur over a peasant girl he is smitten by, and they stir up the Frisians against him.
Review:
Despite being compromised by a creaky script in places and a substandard medieval-style score by Jerome Moross, this vivid reconstruction of an eleventh century settlement and Norman keep is a superb piece of production design and expressively shot in pastel hues by Russell Metty. Heston and Forsyth are both excellent in their pregnant silences, and Boone is just a natural in this kind of thing. There is a feeling at the end of anti-climax (after so much blood-letting he hands over the Frisian prince from a position of strength) and lack of resolution (he is apparently mortally wounded and yet he sends the girl away to the north to live among the Frisians and undertakes a long and arduous journey back to the Duke). Nevertheless this a handsome picture which conveys something of life in the middle ages.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 121m
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Cast: Charlton Heston, Richard Boone, Rosemary Forsyth, Guy Stockwell, Maurice Evans
Synopsis:
The Duke of Ghent sends his trusty baron Chrysagon to hold a remote marshy tract of his lands that is occupied by primitive Celts and raided periodically by Frisians. He incurs the hostility of the locals when he arrogates the droit de seigneur over a peasant girl he is smitten by, and they stir up the Frisians against him.
Review:
Despite being compromised by a creaky script in places and a substandard medieval-style score by Jerome Moross, this vivid reconstruction of an eleventh century settlement and Norman keep is a superb piece of production design and expressively shot in pastel hues by Russell Metty. Heston and Forsyth are both excellent in their pregnant silences, and Boone is just a natural in this kind of thing. There is a feeling at the end of anti-climax (after so much blood-letting he hands over the Frisian prince from a position of strength) and lack of resolution (he is apparently mortally wounded and yet he sends the girl away to the north to live among the Frisians and undertakes a long and arduous journey back to the Duke). Nevertheless this a handsome picture which conveys something of life in the middle ages.