Latin may be a dead language, but Latin swashbucklers live this week on “Picture Perfect!”
Alfred Newman gets the blood pumping with his virile soundtrack for “Captain from Castile” (1947), in which Tyrone Power flees persecution at the hands of the Inquisition to join Cortés’ expedition to conquer Mexico. Because conquest is so “in” right now. The film was shot on location with one sequence set against the backdrop of an actual erupting volcano!
Power, of course, was one of the screen’s great Zorros. However, with “The Mask of Zorro” (1998), Antonio Banderas becomes the Zorro for our time. He’s aided and abetted by Anthony Hopkins, as the elder Zorro who mentors him. TWO Zorros in one film! It can’t get any better than that. (Save your “Zorro, the Gay Blade” brickbats for the comments section.) Catherine Zeta-Jones is radiant, and the music by James Horner literally hits all the right notes.
This film was already a throwback on release, with plenty of real-life, real-time swordplay and stunts galore, and the barest minimum of computer-generated bells and whistles. I wish to the ghost of Douglas Fairbanks that popcorn entertainment could still be like this. As it was, “The Mask of Zorro” was like a belated last gasp of the 1980s. It was easily the best swashbuckler of the ‘90s – though, really, was there much competition?
Banderas got a chance to send-up his image in the Dreamworks’ computer-animated feature, “Puss in Boots” (2011), a spin-off from the Shrek series, which actually turned out to be a better sequel than “The Legend of Zorro” (2005).
The film sports plenty of Zorro in-jokes, which extend even to Henry Jackman’s entertaining score. How is it that animated movies are just about the only movies these days that seem to keep up the great symphonic tradition of classic film scoring?
Finally, Errol Flynn has one last swash left in his buckle for “The Adventures of Don Juan” (1948), his last wholly satisfying period adventure. Equally, Max Steiner rises to the occasion and provides one of his best scores, just about on the same level as those of the master of the genre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Gen-Xers may recognize the theme from its use in “The Goonies” – and, now that I think about it, “Zorro, the Gay Blade!”
I hope you’ll join me for an hour of Latin swords, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)
Stream them here!
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