Greatest Swashbucker of All Time?

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Ok what actor do you think was the greatest swashbucker ever? To me only one name comes to mind. And that name would be Errol Flynn. Can there be any doubt?

[Somebody Else]

Flashy?

[Zalmoxis]

Or pirate?

[master of the puppets]

russle crowe , it's not really the actoer himself, i just like the roles he plays, anyone who had played in gladiator deserves my respect. same goes to the guy who played commodus, he's a really good actor.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn.

[Reverend Joe]

Errol Flynn. Captain Blood is one of my favorite movies of all time, even though I always forget about it.

Oh, and Russell (how the hell do you spell that?) Crowe ain't a swashbuckler. At all.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Any of you know where Errol is from?
Heres a few of his movies


Maybe the best swashbuckling movie ever
And there are many more.

Seems he had a thing for Olivia D.
They made a great team along with good old Alan Hale.

(Deleted hotlink pics - Beirut)

[KukriKhan]

Flynn was a Tasmanian devil.

Sorry your keyboard 'L' misfunctioned when you made this topic, Gawain, Ol' buddy. :)

The kids here probably thought you referred to a new guitar pickup, related to the Humbucker.

Errol was pretty good, but, the KING of swash-buckling IMO is Danny Kaye. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...542790-3848901
Genius. Brilliant, funny man... and a master fencer.

[Ianofsmeg16]

Greatest Swashbuckling Character = Sharpe (new-ish i know but i dont care)

Greatest Swashbuckling actor= I dunno, might have to agree with all the Errol Flynn voters

[Dâriûsh]

I'm with Gawain. It is Errol Flynn, no contest.



Hmm... We need a pirate smiley.

[Duke Malcolm]

Flashy?

Indeed, Flashman is an excellent chap, but I think he did most of his swashbuckling by trying to stay away from any risk of troulble...

[English assassin]

Errol Flynn for sure. Two words: "Robin Hood"

[doc_bean]

Hmm... We need a pirate smiley.

[yesdachi]

Would jackie chan be considered a modern day swashbuckler?

If you can consider Tarzan a swashbuckler then id say Johnny Weissmuller ranks just behind flynn.

[The Stranger]

swashbuckler is sumthing like a buccaneer right...a pirate? i wouldnt know cuz i never really saw much pirate movies...exept pirates of the caribiean and another movie i cant recall its name of

[Gawain of Orkeny]

swashbuckler is sumthing like a buccaneer right

A pirate is only one form of a swahbuckler. Basicly its a dude who fights with a sword. Im surprised no has mentoined the Govenator. Those Conan movies were pretty good. But Flynn has a long list of great swashbucling roles. Robinhood ,Captainblood, Don Juan, Charge of the Light Brigade,The Seahawks, The Private lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the Prince and the Pauper to name a few.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr has also played a lot of these types of roles. Another would be Tyrone Power, Made a great Zorro. And have any of you seen The Captain from Castile? A wonderful movie about Cortez.

[English assassin]

Im surprised no has mentoined the Govenator. Those Conan movies were pretty good.

Nooooo, a swashbuckler has to fight with skill and speed, not strength, and also he has to be witty and to flirt (chastely) with the leading lady.

If he isn't using a rapier (cutlasses are acceptable for pirates) he isn't swashbuckling.

Tyrone Power is another good call, I used to love Zorro on saturday morning TV as a kid.

[Somebody Else]

Modern actors in swashbuckling roles (and I'm just going to ignore Pirates of the Caribbean).

Er... Maybe Banderas? Difficult though - it's hard to reconcile the idea of a charming rogue with the square jawed goody goody moron favoured by Hollywood these days...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Burt Lancaster makes a pretty good swashbuckler as well. Used to be a circus performer, so he can do some pretty fancy acrobatics. I've only seen him in The Crimson Pirate and some William Tell movie.

[Blodrast]

I'll go with Errol Flynn too.
What about Kirk Douglas, does he count as a swashbluckler ? See Spartacus, for instance.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Burt Lancaster makes a pretty good swashbuckler as well. Used to be a circus performer, so he can do some pretty fancy acrobatics. I've only seen him in The Crimson Pirate and some William Tell movie.

The Willian Tell one was The Flame and the Arrow . Both also featured a deaf mute who also did spectacular stunts and in real life was Burts parnter in his circus act billed as "Lang & Cravat"). Flynn alos performed most of his own stunts and swordplay. Does anyone know who was considered the finest fencer as an actor?

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

[Forward Observer]

The Willian Tell one was The Flame and the Arrow . Both also featured a deaf mute who also did spectacular stunts and in real life was Burts parnter in his circus act billed as "Lang & Cravat"). Flynn alos performed most of his own stunts and swordplay. Does anyone know who was considered the finest fencer as an actor?

I don't know if he was the best, but Basil Rathbone is always mentioned as an excellent fencer. He was much more proficient than Flynn, but being the villian in both Captain Blood and Robin Hood, he was destined to lose.

If you want to see one of the later swashbuckler movies with a lot of fantastic fencing, find a DVD of Scaramouche. Like Captain Blood, It was another Rafael Sabatini story put to film and it starred Stuart Granger and Mel Ferrer plus a very young Janet Leigh (later wife of Tony Curtiss and mother of Jamie Lee Curtiss )

It has the distinction of having one of longest, if not the longest, fencing scenes ever put in a movie. It goes on for like 20 minutes or so. It is a really beautiful period costume movie filmed in Techicolor.

The Aventures of Robin Hood with Flynn, DeHaviland, Raines, and Rathbone has to be one of my all time favorites and it still holds up quite well today. The old Technicolor process gave films a classic painted picture look that is missing in today's films. I have the two disc collectors edition, and watch it over and over again on a regular basis.

As several have said, I would probably go with Tyrone Power as my second swashbuckler choice.

Bandaras carried off the modern Zorro movies quite well, and I guess those two Bandalero movies could be considered swashbucklers with guns.

I would love to see a good remake of Captain Blood, but I don't think any actor alive today could ever live up to Flynn in the role. Maybe Mel Gibson when he was much younger, and Crowe might just be the only other big name actor that could carry it off. Master & Commander is probably the best age of sail movie made in the last 40 years.

And please do not mention Johnny Depp. IMHO his portrayal of the Jack Sparrow character in PTOC as perpetually drunk was stupid to the point that it distracted from the movie.

Cheers

[Somebody Else]

The Princess Bride!

Also, Depardieu might be worth mentioning...

[Gawain of Orkeny]

I don't know if he was the best, but Basil Rathbone is always mentioned as an excellent fencer. He was much more proficient than Flynn, but being the villian in both Captain Blood and Robin Hood, he was destined to lose.

Yup Basil was the man. He also was quite good as the Captain in Zorro.

Heres a guy that you wouldnt think of as a swashbuckler but did it quite well. Gene Kelly in the Three Musketeers. I hated when he spoke but the fighting scenes are quite spectacular. I was amazed to see how mant versions there are of this movie. Heres a few of the more interesting ones.

The Gay Musketeer (1928)
I don't know if this is in any way related to the story of D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, but would point out that this movie predates (I believe) the modern usage of the word "gay".

The Three Musketeers 1933
Directed by Colbert Clark; starring John Wayne, Raymond Hatton, Lon Chaney Jr., Francis X. Bushman, William Desmond, John Qualen and Noah Beery Jr. A serial of twelve chapters totaling 215 minutes, in which the story is translated to North Africa, with the Foreign Legion taking the place of the King's Musketeers.

The Three Musketeers 1939
AKA The Singing Musketeer. Directed by Alan Dwan; adapted by William A. Drake, Sam Hellman, Ray Golden, Sam Hellman, Sid Kuller and M.M. Musselman; starring Don Ameche as D'Artagnan and the Ritz Brothers comedy team as his [sorta] brothers in arms. 73 minute movie musical comedy version of the classic story.


The Three Musketeers 1948.
Directed by George Sidney; adapted by Robert Ardrey; starring Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, Gig Young, Vincent Price, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn and Robert Coote. This 125-minute screenplay manages to cram an amazing percentage of the story into a single standard-length movie. The humor and Gene Kelly's D'Artagnan are somewhat broad, but the movie is very good and the scenery and costumes make full use of the Technicolor process. I particularly like Van Heflin's Athos.

Heres a link to more versions
LINK

[Alexanderofmacedon]

The Princess Bride!

Also, Depardieu might be worth mentioning...

Of course!

[Geezer57]

Errol Flynn may be the most often mentioned, but Douglas Fairbanks Sr. (not Jr.) pioneered the whole genre: he was the first film Robin Hood (1922), the first Zorro (1920), did The Three Musketeers (1921), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926), etc.

He was a talented amateur gymnast who did all his own stunts, conducted a secret love affair with Mary Pickford (known at the time as "America's Sweetheart") and later married her. He was a founder of United Artists Corporation, whose goal was to provide independent distribution for artists who produced their own movies. He wrote and published books, did his own screenplays, produced his own films.

Truly something of a Renaissance Man, he practically invented the swashbuckling movie on his own. A true pioneer in the industry. See more at: http://douglasfairbanks.org/

[Forward Observer]

Yup Basil was the man. He also was quite good as the Captain in Zorro.

Heres a guy that you wouldnt think of as a swashbuckler but did it quite well. Gene Kelly in the Three Musketeers. I hated when he spoke but the fighting scenes are quite spectacular. I was amazed to see how mant versions there are of this movie. Heres a few of the more interesting ones.



The Three Musketeers 1948.
Directed by George Sidney; adapted by Robert Ardrey; starring Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, Gig Young, Vincent Price, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn and Robert Coote. This 125-minute screenplay manages to cram an amazing percentage of the story into a single standard-length movie. The humor and Gene Kelly's D'Artagnan are somewhat broad, but the movie is very good and the scenery and costumes make full use of the Technicolor process. I particularly like Van Heflin's Athos.

[/URL]

I had forgotten about Kelly's amazingly acrobatic protrayal of D'Artagnan. He also did a similar role in a movie movie with Judy Garland called a "The Pirate".

My favorite Musketeer movies are the 1973 Three Musketeers and its 1974 sequel The Four Musketeers starring Micheal York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Frank Findlay as the musketeers. The two films were shot in sequence at the same time, but then edited into two separate movies as were the Dumas novels

The actors thought they were filming one movie, but later when they found out it was made into two movies, they actully sued the production company and won for extra salaries.

Regardless, the sword fights are are gritty and realistic, the costumes lavish, and the overall look of the movie and sets seem totally authentic for the period.

Turning in great supporting roles were Christofer Lee as Rochefort, Charleton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu, Fay Dunnaway as Lady Dewinter, and Raquel Welch as Contance. (Actually one of Welch's best movie roles ever.)

I also have the two disc set of these movies, but I found out recently that there is a third movie with most of the original cast made in 1989 called Return of the Musketeers . I found it at Amazon, but only in VHS. Still for less than $10 it might be worth having to complete the set.

Cheers

[Duke Malcolm]

Errol Flynn is on this week, courtesy of Auntie, starring as General Custer. Which I have the full intention of watching...