It’s dispiriting to me, as a lifelong film buff, to realize I haven’t really liked all that many movies in the 21st century. And it’s especially sobering to note, at nearly a quarter of the way through it (!), it doesn’t seem the movies are about to get any better.
One notable exception is “The Artist” (2011). This is a film I can’t love enough. Dismissed by some as a stunt, perhaps the first feature-length silent movie since the Mel Brooks comedy in 1976 (and black-and-white, to boot), for those of us who love classic film, “The Artist” charmed us down to our sock-garters. If it had ended with the opening sequence, a five-minute pastiche of a swaggering spy thriller, with an adventurer in top hat and domino mask (and a knockout score by Ludovic Bource conjuring the Golden Age high spirits of Alfred Newman and Franz Waxman), it would have been enough to send me home walking on air, shouting, “Long live free Georgia!”
Of course, the movie had to be French. I guess you’d have to go to France to find two such ridiculously charismatic leads, Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. (Three, if you count the talented terrier Uggie.) Dujardin won an Oscar, one of seven garnered by the film, including Best Picture, and if not for the fact that his mastery of English is shaky at best, or was, he would probably have become the next George Clooney. In fact, the two actors co-starred in Clooney’s “The Monuments Men,” a film which, despite its all-star cast, failed to really catch fire.
We have so few leading men anymore that exude that kind of charisma, which transcends mere screen presence. Therefore, it is with elation that I learn Dujardin is about to appear in a new Zorro adaptation, not for the movies, alas, but rather a limited series scheduled to drop in September on Paramount+.
With apologies to Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power, both of whom were fine Zorros in their respective ways, I never thought there would be a more perfectly-cast Zorro than Antonio Banderas. Dujardin is one of the few who could give Antonio a run for his pesos.
Surprisingly, the casting flies in the face of the current trend of matching characters with actors of similar ethnicity. It doesn’t bother me to have a French Zorro (hey, Alain Delon played him in the ‘70s), but I’m a white middle-aged male. I’m not trying to stir controversy with the observation, but it is something that one notices these days. Which perhaps is the best reason these social movements exist. We should at least pause to consider that maybe a Latino actor would make an excellent Zorro, but not to the exclusion of other actors being up for the role.
That said, if a “white” Zorro happens to offend anyone’s 21st century sensibilities, there is supposedly another Zorro project in development which will star Gael García Bernal, perhaps familiar to Americans who saw “The Motorcycle Diaries” and “Y tu mamá también,” or at the very least “Mozart in the Jungle,” in which he had a chance to exude his own quirky charisma. I’d be up for his Zorro too, although sadly it looks as if the plan is to set that story in a post-apocalyptic future, which for me could be a non-starter.
Otherwise, I’m thankful for any Zorro movie. The Three Musketeers, too, if they would just do it right and go back to the books. Alexandre Dumas was a much better writer than Johnston McCulley!
Bring back the swashbuckler, please, but keep it light!
My only concern is, will Dujardin’s “Zorro” air in the U.S., or only on Paramount+ France? There are no subtitles on the trailer.
What??? There’s another Zorro out, right now?!! Streaming on Prime Video, with some pretty boy named Miguel Bernardeau. This one looks like it’s 21st century garbage.
Barring the return of Banderas, my pesos are on Dujardin!
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