SCFZ Genre Poll: Swashbucklers!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

A poll to find our favourite swashbuckler and/or pirate movies.

Your ballot can be up to 30 films. And of course it can be shorter. There aren’t that many movies in this genre, so I'm expecting this will be plenty, but we can absolutely expand if people really want to vote for more.

Your ballot can be up to 60 films.

Scoring System

I’ll steal Flip’s tier system for genre polls: Partly-ranked ballots make for better polls. If you want to partly rank your ballot (strongly encouraged!), divide it into 'tiers' or 'blocks' of equal size. Your options are:

- Five tiers of equal size, scored 5-4-3-2-1 pts/film/tier
- Four tiers of equal size, 4.5-3.5-2.5-1.5 pts/film/tier
- Three tiers of equal size, 5, 3, 1 pts/film/tier
- Two tiers of equal size; scored 4-2 pts/film/tier
- No tiers, unranked; scored 3 pts/film

Definition of Genre

It’s entirely up to you to decide, but I thought I’d offer a little info to help people decide. My understanding is that in literature ‘swashbucklers’ referred to adventure stories of sword-wielding heroes (mostly set in medieval or early modern Europe), but not to stories of pirates – only to land-lubbers like The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, et al. But in cinema, dueling sword movies set on land or on sea (typically, with pirates) were both called ‘swashbucklers’, so that’s the definition will allow for this poll. Also, arty movies that aren’t really swashbucklers but are inspired by the pirate mythos are fair game in my book. But again, it’s entirely up to you!

Deadline for ballots

December 31st, at midnight(-ish) EST.

[flip]

i found this list, which seems great, looks like it has a ton of relevant titles:

https://letterboxd.com/igorcristiano/list/swashbuckler/

i have seen a shockingly small fraction of that list. i picked out my five favourites from it, but i'm sure i'll edit this ballot a few times before the deadline. edit: only edited it once, i need to see more swashbucklers at some point! in three tiers:


The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952)
The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942)

The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell/WS Van Dyke, 1937)
Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949)

The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan, 1929)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Michael Gordon, 1950)

edit - and i found another list and added a title (1950's cyrano) that wasn't on that 400-film long list)

[arkheia]

Here's my list (nonranked) so far, overwhelmingly Hollywood output of the 30s-50s so hopefully I'll be able to find some more films from other countries too.

Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955)
Anne of the Indies (Jacques Tourneur, 1951)
Madame X - Einee absolute Herrscherin (Ulrike Ottinger, 1978)
The Sea Hawk (Michael Curtiz, 1940)
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935)
The Black Pirate (Albert Parker, 1926)
Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003)
Noroît (une vengeance) (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander Mackendrick 1965)


Watch list:
Blackbeard, the Pirate (Raoul Walsh, 1952)
Botany Bay (John Farrow, 1953)
Caribbean (Edward Ludwig, 1952)
The Pirate (Chang Cheh / Pao Huseh-li / Wu Ma, 1973)
Fair Wind to Java (Joseph Kane, 1953)
I tre corsari (Mario Soldati, 1952)
The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942)
La nave delle donne maledette (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1853)
The Buccaneer (Cecil B. DeMille, 1938)
The Spanish Main (Frank Borzage, 1945)


I found this list that Brian D made with a lot of great suggestions too!
https://letterboxd.com/brian_davisson/l ... ate-films/

[brian d]

the black pirate (albert parker, 1926)
the sea hawk (michael curtiz, 1940)
a high wind in jamaica (alexander mackendrick, 1965)
treasure island (fraser clarke heston, 1990)

amar jyoti (rajaram vankudre shantaram, 1936)
baaz (guru dutt, 1953)
noroît (jacques rivette, 1976)
madame x (ulrike ottinger, 1978)

the flame and the arrow (jacques tourneur, 1950)
ivanhoe (richard thorpe, 1952)
moonfleet (fritz lang, 1955)
muppet treasure island (brian henson, 1996)

anne of the indies (jacques tourneur, 1951)
the pirate (chang cheh, 1973)
the valiant ones (king hu, 1975)
the princess bride (rob reiner, 1987)

the black swan (henry king, 1942)
the lost world of sinbad (senkichi taniguchi, 1963)
the pirates of blood river (john gilling, 1965)
robin hood: men in tights mel brooks, 1993)

[sally]

this is so frustrating. obviously struck by how the silents seem to dive straight into fairbanks and of course there are loads previous but they're all lost lost lost. jasset had a serial! even feuillade had a pop, & hobart bosworth was all over sea crime - if anyone can find blackbeard (1911)! cuz it exists! vile & violent apparently!:




and gals have a good showing (foreshadowing tourneur, dutt & cottafavi) but still....lost...





on the other hand i did discover that one of feuillade's is out there (tho no subs and i think german intertitles which i can't read a word of) but also surprisingly since italian films from the 20's are so rare (but also not surprisingly because by the time fascist italy really got into filmmaking they pumped swashbucklers out like not even hollywood) an augusto genina/carmino gallone pirate movie:

https://vimeo.com/114127278

not such a great fan of the spoofs, tho did guffaw at lupino lane's sword points (and of course, ♥ linder) but also worth a mention, if merely because they (his family/ his estate?) have been uploading HD legit shorts on youtube and this is the most female pirates you'll see all at once:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pn8ZcqYFb4

anyway if anyone can find any on this list apart from betty & the buccaneers and lieutenant rose and the chinese pirates, i'd be grateful....

http://barracudapirates.blogspot.com/20 ... -1920.html

[ofrene]

Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, William Keighley, 1938)
Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983)

Noroit (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski, 2003)

[greennui]

Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973)
Royal Cat Nap (Joseph Barbera/William Hanna, 1958)
City of Pirates (Raul Ruiz, 1983)
Treasure Island (Raúl Ruiz, 1985)
Singing Behind Screens (Ermanno Olmi, 2003)
A Woman in the Typhoon Area (Hideo Oba, 1948)
Princess of the Nile (Harmon Jones, 1954)
Scaramouche (George Sidney, 1952)
Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955)
Anne of the Indies (Jacques Tourneur, 1951)

[nrh]

speaking of women pirates there is a pretty good copy of v shantaram's 1936 amar jyoti up with subs -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3vwX4W_Fqw&t=1385s

the huge success of fearless nadia as hunterwali in 1935 seems to have led to ton of women led stunt and swashbuckling films for a decade or so, but most of those (including huterwali) seem lost -



guru dutt's baaz in '53 seems to be about the last of those films, everything i can think of after that has more traditional male leads.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

tier 1:
Madame X (Ulrike Ottinger, 1978)

tier 2:
Sandokan (Sergio Sollima, 1976)

"Sandokan" mini-series, premiered on local TV in 1983.
instantly, it became a nation-wide cult.
the whole communist Czechoslovakia was adoring Tiger of Mompracem, the anti-imperialist pirate.
https://youtu.be/TfSvXyVesnE

[sally]

have been scanning a few online polls and robin hood is usually up at the top somewhere. notable to me (who has never seen it) as my introduction to cinemetrics:

http://cinemetrics.lv/distrib.pdf

and forever fond of something that is so amenable to the translations of its thrills into graph-omania

you thought robin hood was all technicolor leaping and squinting optimistically at his tights? no! THIS is robin hood

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Two swashbucklers into my poll viewing (this will be my focus for August): Sirk's Captain Lightfoot, with Rock Hudson, and Sherman's Against All Flags, with Flynn and O'Hara. My evaluation of both movies is similar, narratively disappointing but carried into serviceable diversions by some excellent visuals. Interestingly, O'Hara's outfits in Against All Flags recall the iconic costumes of Flynn as Robin Hood.

[sally]

captain lightfoot is delish!



am surprised to discover ophuls did a swashbuckler. curious. (i might possibly watch it even)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I'd been saving Minnelli's The Pirate, so that I'd have a Minnelli musical masterpiece to look forward to. It didn't disappoint, just a delight.

[Lencho of the Apes]

Swashbug-adjacent... or at least 'female action hero'...

Woman Warrior White Rose (1929) incomplete, 27 minutes.
Woman Warrior of the White River 6: Rumble at Deerhorn Gully (1930) incomplete, 74 minutes
Wild Rose (1932)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Xdir ... kdA/videos

[wba]

I love love love love swashbuckling movies where people fight with swords( aka "adventure stories of sword-wielding heroes", as Evelyn described the genre in her introductory post)

Haven't seen that many, but here are my 60 favorites (I mostly listed films with four and a half or five star ratings on my letterboxd account):


Five tiers


Cutthroat Island (Renny Harlin, 1995)
The Great Wall (Shigeo Tanaka, 1962)
Have Sword, Will Travel (Cheh Chang, 1969)
First Knight (Jerry Zucker, 1995)
Little Dragon Maiden (Shan Hua, 1983)
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (Ken Annakin, 1952)
Samson and the Slave Queen (Umberto Lenzi, 1963)
Long Live Robin Hood (Giorgio Ferroni, 1971)
Zorro (Duccio Tessari, 1975)
House of Flying Daggers (Yimou Zhang, 2004)
Lancelot of the Lake (Robert Bresson, 1974)
Lost World of Sinbad (Senkichi Taniguchi, 1963)


The Black Pirate (Albert Parker, 1926)
The Bold Caballero (Wells Root, 1936)
Dragon Inn (Kinh Hu, 1967)
The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924)
The Black Corsair (Sergio Sollima, 1976)
Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953)
Conquest (Lucio Fulci, 1983)
Fire and Ice (Ralph Bakshi, 1983)
The New One-Armed Swordsman (Cheh Chang, 1971)
Come Drink with Me (King Hu, 1966)
Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983)
Clash of the Warlords (Willy Milan, 1985)


The One-Armed Swordsman (Cheh Chang, 1967)
Captain Sindbad (Byron Haskin, 1963)
Temple of the Red Lotus (Tseng-Hung Hsu, 1965)
Peter Pan (Hamilton Luske/Wilfred Jackson/Clyde Geronimi, 1953)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman, 1962)
The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1963)
Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982)
The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, 1940)
Pathfinder (Marcus Nispel, 2007)
The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu, 1973)
Flesh + Blood (Paul Verhoeven, 1985)
The Web of Death (Yuen Chor, 1976)


Against All Flags (George Sherman, 1952)
Golden Swallow (Cheh Chang, 1968)
The Beloved Rogue (Alan Crosland, 1927)
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Guy Ritchie, 2017)
Ye Olden Days (Burt Gillett, 1933)
The Sword of Swords (Kang Cheng, 1968)
Hero (Yimou Zhang, 2002)
The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948)
The Two Mouseketeers (Joseph Barbera/William Hanna, 1952)
The Musketeer (Peter Hyams, 2001)
The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958)
Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe, 1952)


The Thief of Baghdad (Arthur Lubin, 1961)
The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak, 1952)
The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942)
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935)
Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973)
Scaramouche (George Sidney, 1952)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Reynolds, 1991)
Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985)
The Court Jester (Melvin Frank/Norman Panama, 1955)
Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995)
The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo, 1920)
The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)


PS: What's the difference between Swashbucklers, Wuxia, sword-fighting films about the middle ages and Sword and Sorcery films? I can't really find a clear/sensible demarcation line between all those...

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I love love love love swashbuckling movies where people fight with swords( aka "adventure stories of sword-wielding heroes", as Evelyn described the genre in her introductory post)!!!

Haven't seen that many, but here are my 60 favorites (I only listed films with four and a half or five star ratings on my letterboxd account):


PS: What's the difference between Swashbucklers, Wuxia, sword-fighting films about the middle ages and Sword and Sorcery films? I can't really find a clear/sensible demarcation line between all those...

Splendid, thanks for your long ballot wba! Ballot lengths extended to 60 to allow for the ballot. If you want to put your ballot in tiers that would help make the results less even, but happy to accept it as an unranked ballot as well of course.

I think sword-fighting films in the middle ages are fair-ish game for the standard definition of swashbuckler, but sword and sorcery films and wuxia are somewhat different genres, unless they're explicitly inspired by the swashbuckler mythos. That said, it's entirely up to you, and I have no problem with people including them to make a more diverse poll result.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

NOTE: POLL EXTENDED TO NOVEMBER.

I didn't get to watch as many swashbucklers as I wanted to this August, so I'm extending this poll until a date TBD in mid-November. (September will be back to school, and everyone will be thinking about horror in October). Hopefully that gives us all time to squeeze in a few more swashbucklers over the next couple months along with our other viewings. Ships ahoy!

[wba]

I love love love love swashbuckling movies where people fight with swords( aka "adventure stories of sword-wielding heroes", as Evelyn described the genre in her introductory post)!!!

Haven't seen that many, but here are my 60 favorites (I only listed films with four and a half or five star ratings on my letterboxd account):


PS: What's the difference between Swashbucklers, Wuxia, sword-fighting films about the middle ages and Sword and Sorcery films? I can't really find a clear/sensible demarcation line between all those...

Splendid, thanks for your long ballot wba! Ballot lengths extended to 60 to allow for the ballot. If you want to put your ballot in tiers that would help make the results less even, but happy to accept it as an unranked ballot as well of course.

I think sword-fighting films in the middle ages are fair-ish game for the standard definition of swashbuckler, but sword and sorcery films and wuxia are somewhat different genres, unless they're explicitly inspired by the swashbuckler mythos. That said, it's entirely up to you, and I have no problem with people including them to make a more diverse poll result.

Thanks for the quick reply Evelyn.

I was just curious, cause for example the two wonderful RIchard Thorpe films IVANHOE (1952) and KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (1953) are so very similar in style, mood and execution, but while one is clearly a Swashbuckler set in the middle ages (Ivanhoe), the other is pure Sword and Sourcery gold set in a fantasy world (Knights) - and what's with a film like LANCELOT OF THE LAKE (Bresson, 1973) which seems like a mixture of the two, as it seems on one side steeped in stark realism of the "middle-ages" and on the other hand a reworking of an aspect of the King Arthus myth (which seems to me to be one of the main sources - if not THE main source - of all Sword and Sourcery-stuff in the arts).
And it seems strange to include only films that are set in Europe on one hand, and then allow for pirate films (many of which are clearly not set in europe at all, but for example the Carribean) but then to exclude a continent like Asia (where there were historically pirates as well, and still are today, cause of course pirates aren't limited by continents but roamed and roam most of the seas of the world [see also vikings, an older form of pirates]) or Africa. That's why I included all those asian swordplay adventures that I love.
Maybe it's the difference between fact and fiction, but when we deal with eras long ago a lot of presumed fact might be mere fiction after all. We're in the realm of art and invention anyways, when we're dealing with films.
That's why I included the films I did include. I hope that helps a bit to explain my "own" defintion (which I'm not sure about at all).

PS: I was also thinking about films like AGUIRRE (Herzog, 70s) or films about Napoleon Bonaparte and the wars in Europe, which are basically about adventures and adventurers mostly armed with swords as well. (I didn't explicitly include them in my list, though a film like THE BLACK CORSAIR (1976), which I did include, touches on the conquistadore stuff as well, and a film like SCARAMOUCHE (1952) - which I also included - is extremely close to the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars).

[nrh]

i always think of the swashbuckler as a very post enlightenment tendency, anything really tries to deal with the pre-enlightenment world on its own values seems to be doing a different thing. so rohmer's percival or boorman's excalibur are out, but fleischer's vikings or curtiz robin hood are in.

in some ways all swashbucklers trend towards ruritania (and this goes for non euro films like aayirathil oruvan '65 or jhinder bondi). wuxia, peplum, and chanbara/samurai films seem to be doing something very different. maybe it is just more interesting to talk about those films within their own traditions, it kind of flattens things out to smush them all together.

the sci-fi/fantasy/sword and sorcery question is interesting though. in the 40s and 50s you have fritz leiber's fafhrd and the grey mouser stories, which more or less invent the category of sword and sorcery, and have a ton of swashbuckler dna. leigh brackett (famous for her hawks screenplays) writes tons of planetary romance novels which have similar connection to the genre, you get stuff like the temporal adventuress heroines of cl moore, joanna russ and michael moorcock, but none of this ever really shows up in movies at all. you can maybe make an argument for something like fleischer's red sonja but otherwise it is a popular genre that never really translated to movies.

[wba]

Fritz Lang's two NIBELUNGEN movies are prototypical Sword and Sorcery as well.

[wba]

EDIT: I also made 5 tiers out of my 60 entries.

[wba]

wuxia seem to be doing something very different. maybe it is just more interesting to talk about those films within their own traditions, it kind of flattens things out to smush them all together.

the sci-fi/fantasy/sword and sorcery question is interesting though.

But isn't wuxia the chinese equivalent to the western sword and sorcery stuff, which also has its roots in myths, mythology and legends (be it egyptian, greek, roman, or other - and of course later stuff like the Nibelungen stories and the King Arthur stories - and then Robert E. Howard reworked all those for a modern 20th century audience). DIdn't wuxia take a similar path?

I excluded Samurai films, cause clearly much of those Samurai films we know in the west, are more interested in "history" as such - but of course there are also thousands of Japanese Samurai films that are sword and sorcery-inspired, and are actually swashbucklers (basically most Samurai films made pre-1945, if one trusts the books on Japanese film history)

[wba]

Maybe, if we only limited ourselves to US films or English language films in this poll/genre, we could arrive at a clearer picture/demarcation?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Thanks so much for the tiers wba!

My sense is that the literature and films at the heart of the swashbuckler genre were produced by American, French, and Italian creators. Swashbucklers in other film industries tend to take inspiration from the original works in those national literatures / film industries. So I'd personally lean to nrh's approach of not wanting to subsume other cultural traditions of sword-fighting movies into 'swashbucklers', which is perhaps better understood as 'sword-fighting movies inspired by certain specific Western European sword-fighting tropes'. That definition still allows for plenty of non-European and non-American movies to be voted on. There are multiple Japanese, multiple Indian, and multiple Chinese-language movies that make use of swashbuckler tropes, for example.

That said, it's entirely up to you, and I'm happy with diverse interpretations of the meaning of swashbuckler in our ballots. There's something to be said for seeing the connections between different sword-fighting story traditions. And especially in the context of creating a list of recommendations, I'd always want to lean toward including a borderline case from a non-European or non-American national cinema rather than excluding it, because much of the value of a list like this is highlighting titles that a lot of other lists might not highlight.

[nrh]

But isn't wuxia the chinese equivalent to the western sword and sorcery stuff, which also has its roots in myths, mythology and legends (be it egyptian, greek, roman, or other - and of course later stuff like the Nibelungen stories and the King Arthur stories - and then Robert E. Howard reworked all those for a modern 20th century audience). DIdn't wuxia take a similar path?

as far as i can understand the "sword & sorcery" tradition is pretty specific - basically in the early '60s michael moorcock (who was writing what we'd now think of a fanzines and was just starting to write his elric and eternal champion stories) more or less asked an open question, which is what name would we give to this tradition of fantasy fiction where you have a heroic protagonist or band of heroes in either a mythic version of the past (the conan or kull stories by howard), a fully invented secondary world (rare before tolkien but the lieber stories are there) or a planetary romance setting (like the burroughs or leigh brackett stories) where magic and wizard shit are also part of the fiction. moorcock was toying with heroic fantasy or epic fantasy but fritz leiber suggested sword and sorcery and gained popularity enough that l sprague de camp used it for an anthology title in 1963.

the grand, myth derived sort of existed but seems like a different beast (things really change when tolkien became the major figure in the '60s). i love the t.h. white arthur books (and can't recommend the sylvia townsend warner biography of him enough) but that's kind of a different thing. dumas takes history seriously but the popular writers that follow him like sabatini and alexander pope (who invents ruritania) treat history as a kind of playground, which you get the apotheosis of in something like freda's casanova movie or the flashman novels (which lester adapted as royal flash). the early sword and sorcery books really aren't that far off from something like scaramouche. the kind of chivalrous romance of the arthur stories, or ivanhoe, seems like a totally different trend.

wuxia i think is complicated. those stories go back hundreds of years, and exist in both print and theater before they get to film. and certainly king hu looks back to pu songling and cheh chang goes back to the water margin and so on. but most of the wuxia films are derived from a group of 3 authors (jin yong, louis cha, liang yusheng) who revitalized the genre in the middle of the twentieth century. i've read very little of these (they are only now getting translated into english) but there does seem to be far more connection to the chivalrous romance tradition than to sword and sorcery or swashbucklers or dumas.

but this sort of thing is only worth talking about as a fun exercise, a fun list is a fun list no matter how we categorize things.

[wba]

This looks great!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

My plan is to spend December focusing on swashbucklers – nothing more fitting for wintry season viewing than dreams of seafaring adventure – and to have a tallied result to publish at the dawn of the new year. So the new hard deadline for ballots will be December 31st at midnight(-ish).

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

One of the funniest things I've seen in a movie all year. Prisoner of Zenda (1937) opens making so much of the fact that Ronald Colman is an Englishman in a strange Germanic land, and once he's through customs, the first representatives of the non-Englishmen of Zenda he meets are....



.... David Niven and C. Aubrey Smith!

[...]

Heh. One of my favorite adventure yarns from the studio era. If you get a chance you should check out the '52 version sometime soon too, not nearly as fun, but it uses a much of the same script, word for word, but to hugely different effect with the changes in actors, director, and era. Makes for a neat comparison.

[rischka]

How did I miss the swashbuckling poll??! Thx for the extra time Evelyn