The Black Shield of Falworth

Dir: Rudolph Maté

1954

***

Rudolph Maté’s 1954 The Black Shield of Falworth is an adaption of Howard Pyle's 1891 novel Men of Iron,  a juvenile "coming of age" work in which a young squire, Myles Falworth, seeks not only to become a knight but to eventually redeem his father's honor. Everything about it, from the sets and clothes to the way the characters speak is historically wrong and merry old England couldn’t have looked more like California if it tried. However, the film stars Tony Curtis, who is like a god to me. I love it. It has about as much swash (and indeed buckle) that you could ever desire from a medieval romp and Curtis jumps around the set like a giant flea in tights, never once letting his thick Brooklyn accent bother him. He never actually says the now infamous line "Yonda stands da castle of my fodda" but part of me wishes that he had. It was the second of five films in which husband and wife Curtis and Janet Leigh appeared together on screen during their nine year marriage – not their best but their worst is still brilliant. The story is about a young Myles Falworth (Curtis) and his sister Meg (Barbara Rush) who live in obscurity on a farm in Crosbey-Dale with their guardian Diccon Bowman (Rhys Williams). This is to protect them from the attainder placed upon their family by King Henry IV of England (Ian Keith) because their father has been (falsely) accused of treason and murdered by the Earl of Alban (David Farrar). When a hunting party comprising the Earl of Alban, the lord of Crosbey-Dale, and another nobleman, Sir Robert, stop at their farm for refreshment, they are repulsed by Myles to stop them molesting his sister. Why anyone thought that the attempted rape scene should feature upbeat trumpets and violins is beyond me. This confrontation accelerates Diccon's plans to send them to Mackworth Castle in Derbyshire (based on the eponymous castle). It is amazing how similar Derbyshire and the San Fernando Valley look. The Earl of Mackworth (Herbert Marshall), a close friend of their father, becomes their protector, and he sees in Myles the man who can rid England of the evil machinations of the Earl of Alban. Myles is trained to be a knight, is knighted by the king, and kills the Earl of Alban in trial by combat, foiling Alban's attempt to seize the English crown. Myles then marries the Earl of Mackworth's daughter, Lady Anne (Janet Leigh). Now you can hate on the story, dialogue and performances all you like, but the last battle scene in the castle is one of the most amazing pieces of cinema of all time. There are quite a few differences between film and book, Myles's father and mother being still alive and distinct lack of sister being the big ones. There is no "black shield of Falworth" in the book, and Myles falls in love with the Earl Mackworth's niece, Alice, rather than his daughter Anne. Falworth's great enemy is only unmasked at the end while in the film Alban is known as the hated tyrant throughout. Myles is only sixteen in the book and the Earl of Alban does not try to seize the throne from King Henry, he actually remains his friend. In the book King Henry is not so pleased by Myles's final victory over the Earl of Alban, and Myles and his family are only given full restitution when King Henry V ascends the throne. Wives aren’t just handed around to the victorious good guys either but I really don’t care because Tony Curtis jumps of a mezzanine and actually makes tights look good on a man. I love how short-tempered and lairy Curtis’s Myles is, always punching first and asking questions later. I’m pretty sure Curtis hurt the other actors in real life. Joking aside, the performances are actually all very good, the film is fluff but the performances are class. I can’t really fault Rudolph Maté’s direction either, it is a cheap studio flick but it features some handsome compositions and like I said before, that last battle scene is cinema gold. The film really is all about Tony Curtis but Torin Thatcher is great as a one-eyed warrior and both Janet Leigh and Barbara Rush are positively enthusiastic in their performances. The film is famous for an apocryphal line, rendered as "Yonda stands da castle of my fodda" or similar but it simply isn’t true. The line is said to have come from a remark made by Debbie Reynolds in a television interview but she simply got confused with the film Son of Ali Baba. In that film Curtis said "This is the palace of my father, and yonder lies the Valley of the Sun", and he did deliver it in a markedly New York accent but that was two years before. This was 1954 and it was up, up, up for Curtis after this. Besides, if you want to laugh at his out-of-place accent, then watch Winchester ’73 instead.