Hollywood’s sound remake of its 1920 silent blockbuster starring Douglas Fairbanks, Rouben Mamoulian’s THE MARK OF ZORRO is a black-and-white corker of a freewheeling swashbuckler headlining a 26-year-old Tyrone Power as our masked bandit.
Early 19th century, Don Diego Vega (Power), the son of a former Alcalde, returns from Spain to the Spain-colonized southern California, susses that the hoi polloi is under the draconian oppression of the current Alcalde Luis Quintero (Bromberg, impertinently farcical and clueless), who is avaricious and autocratic, so it is up to his alter ego Zorro to right the wrong and reinstate his father Alejandro (Love) back to the post, and at the same time, to woo a nubile dame Lolita (Darnell), who happens to be Luis’ niece. While Luis turns out to be exceedingly scare-easy, the real menace is his right-hand man Captain Esteban Pasquale (a surly-looking Rathbone), an expert swordsman who doesn’t espouse Luis’ quitting plan.
Power, who frequently plays ethnic characters - both he and Darnell would star in Mamoulian’s next picture BLOOD AND SAND (1941) where he plays an ill-fated matador -, gladsomely struts his stuff in the masquerade game of alternating between a pusillanimous fop and a deep-voiced, fleet-footed lone hero, wearing his justice-seeking heart on his sleeve. Whereas Darnell has a nominal leading lady role to dicker (her innocence is impeccable), Oscar-winning character actress Gale Sondergaard, who plays Luis’ wife Inez, animates a sybarite’s yen with vivid alacrity and assurance, without slipping into the pigeonholed stereotype of vileness and wiles.
Under Mamoulian’s able hands, THE MARK OF ZORRO proceeds with an expeditious pace where all the ups-and-downs of its threadbare plot fall onto their right places in a whooshing fluidity, pertinently synchronized with Alfred Newman’s Oscar-nominated euphonious score. Although the plot omits Zorro’s own provenance (he literally jumps out of nowhere without any pretext) and doesn’t shore up a convincing reveal of his identity in the final act (hastened on the homestretch one may say), but the fast fencing duel between Zorro and Captain Esteban is simply a feat extraordinaire, and lo and behold, few successors can match that cutting-edge realness in the action.
referential entries: Mamoulian’s BLOOD AND SAND (1941, 7.4/10); Michael Curtin and William Keighley’s THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938, 7.2/10).
