Quentin Durward (1955)
Directed by Richard Thorpe

Film Review

After having collaborated on two successful historical romps, Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953), director Richard Thorpe and actor Robert Taylor completed the hat trick with this feisty adaptation of Walter Scott's 1823 novel Quentin Durward.  Beautifully photographed in widescreen colour and boasting an exceptional cast of fine British actors, the film has much to commend it, although its main selling point is that it doesn't take itself too seriously.  With some impressive location work at castles in France and England, Quentin Durward is a prestige production that showcases British cinema at its flashiest in the mid-1950s.

The film bristles with humour from start to finish, but it still manages to be an exciting swashbuckler, packed with superbly well-choreographed action scenes.  With almost breathtaking ease, Robert Morley steals the film as the calculating Louis XI, showing that the Age of Chivalry is well and truly dead as he concocts various underhand schemes to save his reputation and prevent a costly war.  (We soon see why Louis XI has been dubbed the Spider King.)  At the mid-point of his career, Hollywood star Robert Taylor positively revels in the kind of role that Errol Flynn had virtually monopolised in previous decades.  Meanwhile, the exquisite Kay Kendall is at her most radiant and vivacious as a French countess with a mind of her own and the guts to use it.  The distinguished supporting cast drips with talent and charisma, and includes such familiar names as Wilfrid Hyde-White, Ernest Thesiger and Marius Goring (The Red Shoes), with George Cole making the greatest impact as a comedy gypsy with an uncanny resemblance to his Arthur Daley character in the television series Minder.  Of the numerous swashbucklers that erupted onto the big screen in the 1950s, Quentin Durward is assuredly one of the best made and most enjoyable.

Film Synopsis

In 1465, the impecunious Scottish knight Quentin Durward travels to France to determine whether the Countess Isabelle of Marcroy will make a suitable bride for his aged uncle.  The marriage has been arranged by the Duke of Burgundy to from a lasting alliance with Scotland.  Aware that her intended husband is an old man, Isabelle takes flight and puts herself under the protection of the King of France, Louis XI.  Quentin pursues her and manages to inveigle his way into the king's confidence.  Fearing that a rift with Burgundy will lead to an all-out war that France can ill afford, the king conceives a fiendish plan that will deliver Isabelle into the hands of the notorious brigand Count William de La Marck...