Comparative Anatomy of Folk-Myth Films: Robin Hood and Antonio das Mortes

Abstract

By an odd coincidence, the San Francisco Festival included two weirdly relevant films: Michael Curtiz's 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version) and Glauber Rocha's Antonio das Mortes. Both films are mythic, having little concern with character in the particularist, realist sense we associate with novels or most modern cinema; they strive instead for epic sweep and symbolic impact. (Antonio das Mortes, which is practically operatic in parts, makes some of its points through singing and dance.) Both draw upon folk tradition for much of their resonance-though in the case of the Brazilian film we must rely upon hearsav evidence, since Brazilian culture is very alien to contemporary European or American sensibilities. Juxtaposing the two films may thus throw some light on how we react to folk-myth films, and on some of the distinctions that need to be made about them, both aesthetically and politically. And it may also lend a better perspective for viewing Antonio das Mortes than that of certain enthusiastic young American radicals; for it is at least possible that both films are fundamentally conservative, and constitute (like most folk art) diversions of thought and feeling from tender political questions. Robin Hood now looks somewhat quaint stylistically, especially in its detailing: the costumes, the dialogue (You speak treason! -Aye, fluently!), Errol Flynn's flashing teeth. It has a lush, full-orchestra score, and that characteristic Technicolor visual fulsomeness which now seems so overripe. Its photography and editing are straightforward, competent Hollywood craftsmanship; there is not a daring shot, and not an ineffective one, from one end to the other. The compression of the Robin Hood story, though naturally drastic, does violence chiefly in leaving out the real ending (psychologically perhaps the most intriguing part of the legend); the basic anatomy of the myth is kept intact. Robin and his merrymen were the first--or at any rate the now best-remembered-guerrilla army. Based in the impenetrable wilds of Sherwood Forest, which was the English equivalent of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, they sallied forth on their adventures but could always rely upon the safety of the forest. They could also, in Che Guevara's phrase, hide among the people like fish in the sea. Indeed the film, which heavily emphasizes the race conflict between oppressed Saxons and domineering, corrupt Normans, emphasizes this far more than the story. Robin stole from the rich, and gave to the poor, but his political position was unambiguously monarchist. He was trying to save the Saxons from the oppression of King Richard's brother-who was freely taxing, enslaving, and torturing them-until Richard got back from his crusades. Curtiz takes pains to establish the Norman oppression concretely: Robin gives Marian a guided tour of a kind of Sherwood field hospital, where aged or broken Saxon peasants murmur thanks and devotion to Robin; and near the opening he includes scenes of torture, brutality, and confiscation of Saxon property. The emotional center of Robin Hood, in both story and film, is in the devotion of Robin (who is a noble-Sir Robin of Lockesley) and his band to Richard, the true and reputedly just king. It is this which makes it possible for everyone to approve wholeheartedly of Robin's exploits: the people he robs are clearly vile wrongdoers, intent on usurping the crown for venal ends, and the people he kills are their defenders