The Vikings

Dir: Richard Fleischer

1958

****

Although it looks fairly dated today, Richard Fleischer’s swashbuckling classic is still remembered fondly due to its passionate performances. The script isn’t that great at all and even though Fleischer researched Norse mythology tirelessly and shot the entire film on location, it is clear as day that it is 1958 by the way people speak and look. I personally don’t care. I would much rather watch a historical epic featuring Tony Curtis trying to hide his thick New York accent than one of Ridley Scott’s recent offerings. Tony Curtis versus Kirk Douglas - you just can’t beat it. That said, it was a step down for Douglas following the previous year’s paths of Glory but you could also say that it was a successful dress-rehersal (for both lead actors) for Sparticus, which would come two years later. The story begins when the King of Northumbria is killed during a Viking raid led by the fearsome Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine). Because the king had died childless, his cousin Aella (Frank Thring) takes the throne. The king's widow, however, is pregnant with what she knows is Ragnar's child because he had raped her during that fateful raid, and to protect the infant from her cousin-in-law's ambitions, she sends him off to Italy. By a twist of fate, the ship is intercepted by the Vikings, who are unaware of the child's kinship, and enslave him. The boy grows into a young man named Eric (Tony Curtis). His parentage is finally discovered by Lord Egbert (James Donald), a Northumbrian nobleman opposed to Aella. When Aella accuses him of treason, Egbert finds sanctuary with Ragnar in Norway. Egbert recognises the Northumbrian royal sword's pommel stone on an amulet around Eric's neck, placed there by Eric's mother when he was a child, but tells no one. Eric incurs the wrath of his half-brother Einar (Kirk Douglas), Ragnar's legitimate son and heir, after the former orders his falcon to attack Einar, taking out one of his eyes. Eric is saved from immediate execution when the royal Court Völva Kitala (who loves Eric as a son) warns that Odin will curse whoever kills him. He is left in a tidal pool to drown with the rising tide by Ragnar's decree to avoid the curse, but after Kitala calls out to Odin making Erik himself to invoke his mercy, a strong wind shifts and forces the water away, saving him. Lord Egbert then claims him as his slave property to protect his rights, before Einar keenly aware of the weather shift can return and finish him. Egbert hopes to find an opportunity to take advantage of Eric's unknown claim to the Northumbrian kingdom. The enmity between Eric and Einar is exacerbated when they both fall in love with the Christian Princess Morgana (Janet Leigh), who was to marry King Aella but is captured in a raid suggested by Egbert, to demand ransom and bring shame and political unpopularity pressure upon the Northumbrian monarch. During a drunken feast in the "great hall", Einar confesses his feelings to Ragnar, who tells Einar that women often need to be taken by force and grants his son to take the prisoner as his. Einar throws the guards off the ship Morgana is being held on, and begins to rape her — defying his expectations and hope for resistance, she offers none, denying him his wish to take her by aggressive force. Before things can go any further, Eric grabs Einar from behind and knocks him out easily as he was very drunk, then takes Morgana away on a small ship he had constructed for Egbert. Eric and Morgana flee to England, along with Sandpiper (Eric's friend and fellow slave), Kitala and Morgana's maid Bridget (Dandy Nichols). Einar regains consciousness and gives the alarm, and several pursuing longships quickly gain on the fugitives. In thick fog, Ragnar's longship hits a rock and sinks, while Eric's boat is guided safely by a primitive compass, a piece of magnetite in the shape of a fish that Sandpiper obtained in a distant land. Einar, in another longship, believes Ragnar to be dead and grudgingly abandons the chase. Ragnar, however, is rescued by Eric and taken prisoner to Aella. Eric and Morgana become lovers during the trip, and she agrees to seek release from her pledge to marry Aella. Aella orders the Viking leader bound and thrown into a pit filled with starved wolves. To give Ragnar a Viking's death (so that he can enter Valhalla), Eric, who is granted the honour of forcing him into the pit, cuts the prisoner's bonds and gives him his sword. Laughing, Ragnar jumps to his death. In response to Eric's "treason", Aella cuts off his left hand, puts him back on his ship and casts him adrift. Eric returns to Einar's settlement, and tells his half-brother how his father died, and what had been Aella's reward for allowing Ragnar to die a Viking's death. With this revelation, and the promise that Eric will guide their ships through the fog (thus making a surprise attack possible), Einar is finally able to persuade the other Vikings to mount an invasion of Northumbria. Putting their mutual hatred aside for the moment, Einar and Eric sail for England. The dragon longships land and the Vikings begin to move inland in force. The alarm is sounded and the terrified peasants abandon their fields and flocks and flee to take refuge within the castle. Soon the Vikings are arrayed in front of the fortress in full battle armour. Shouting the name of "Odin!", the Vikings storm Aella's castle. In a bold move, Einar has several Vikings throw axes at the closed drawbridge that bars entrance to the castle's keep. Several of the axe-throwers are killed, but enough survive to throw their axes that a "ladder" is created for Einar to climb after he leaps across the moat to the drawbridge. He gains entry to the keep and lowers the drawbridge so that the other Vikings can overwhelm the outnumbered English. Eric and Einar both set off in search of Morgana. Eric encounters Aella instead and shoves him into the wolf pit. Einar finds Morgana in the highest tower of the keep, he grabs and accosts her, telling her she will be his Queen. Morgana tells Einar she hates him, and loves Erik. Enraged, Einar drags her outside and calls Eric to their long-delayed battle. The two bitter rivals engage in a sword fight on top of the tower. Eric is defeated, his sword broken, but as Einar prepares to deliver the killing blow, he hesitates, having learned the truth from Morgana, and suddenly seeing Ragnar in Eric's defiant face. This gives Eric (who does not yet know they are brothers) the opportunity to fatally stab Einar with his sword's broken blade. Echoing the scene with Ragnar, Eric gives Einar a sword, so that he too can enter Valhalla. In the final scene, Einar is given a Viking funeral and his body is placed on a longship, which is set on fire by flaming arrows. It's all great fun but it has some obvious flaws. Firstly, Douglas was a few months older than Borgnine, so that fact that he plays his son is ridiculous, as is the idea he is in his twenties (he was actually in his forties). It is also unfortunate how the rape scenes are so quickly forgotten. The Vikings are of course famous for their rape and pillage but they are quickly seen as good guys, when nothing they do can be described as good. It’s the classic Hollywood epic, history be damned. I did like how Einar lost and eye and Eric lost a hand though, just as Odin is one-eyed and Týr one-handed, hence Odin being called "One-Eye" and Týr refereed to as the "one-handed god", the pair being the gods of war. The opaque scleral contact lens that Kirk Douglas wore to simulate his blinded eye was said to have been incredibly painful by the actor and it looks it. Interestingly, because Tony Curtis killed Kirk Douglas in this film, it was agreed that Douglas would kill Curtis two years later when both starred together in Spartacus.