CLASSIC NEW TO BLURAY HAS REGIONAL CONNECTIONS

Cinema | March 30th, 2016

Sports fans of the Upper Midwest may have special interest in a classic film released to Bluray this month, since the title is “The Vikings” and one of the sequences features fighting hawks. The Norse setting also depicts the ancient heritage and culture of many North Dakota-Minnesota-Wisconsin families.

Serious analysts might identify some interesting subtext in the 1958 film “The Vikings,” dealing with class, gender, religion, and tribal/cultural relationships to compare the thousand-yearold historical period depicted with the post-World War II-era. But at its root this epic action-adventure is just another collection of variations on the standard Hollywood tale of violent medieval times.

It focuses on interlocking plots of court intrigue and of proud enemies who become romantic rivals for a captured princess, one a slave and the other a chieftain’s son who do not realize they are really brothers. It’s the stuff of ideal Saturday-matinee escapism.

Nevertheless, director Richard Fleischer’s film rises above the typical genre picture thanks to a well-crafted screenplay by noted novelist and screenwriter Calder Willingham, adapted by playwright Dale Wasserman from a novel by Edison Marshall (based to some extent on actual people and events).

The film is most memorable, however, for its spectacular widescreen Technicolor cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff, shot on location in Europe, partly in the actual Norwegian locales where the events took place.

Another major part of its effectiveness in this pre-CGI era is the production’s painstaking recreation of well-researched, authentic-looking sets and props, including a Viking village and full-size ships, as well as staging some large-scale battle sequences and Viking ritual customs, following archaeological information available at the time.

Performances entertainingly often verge on over-the-top, as befitting the larger-than-life characters and full-blown melodrama of many scenes. Other scenes, especially towards the end, give the cast an opportunity for more subtle dramatic nuances.

Ernest Borgnine as the lusty, blustery Viking chief Ragnar, tends to steal the show whenever he’s on screen, but the plot centers around energetic star (and executive producer) Kirk Douglas as his hotheaded, braggart son Einar. Tony Curtis is effective in the more subdued role of Ragnar’s illegitimate son Eric, whose mother was a former English queen assaulted during a Viking raid two decades earlier. He had been later captured by chance as a baby in another raid and raised as a slave with his true parentage known only to those few who could recognize the talisman around his neck (a convenient literary device popular at least as far back as ancient Greece).

Janet Leigh (Curtis’ reallife wife at the time) provides relatively passive love interest as the Welsh princess Morgana, betrothed to the villainous Northumbrian English King Aella (Frank Thring), and the catalyst for most of the clash between Eric and Einar. British character actor James Donald is also fairly restrained as the scheming English nobleman Egbert who’s been playing both sides in the hopes of seizing the usurper Aella’s throne.

“The Vikings” was shot in “Horizon-Spanning” Technirama, a Vista Vision-like widescreen process with 35mm film running horizontally instead of vertically, to provide a larger, sharper negative. Kino’s HD master certainly retains the added clarity the doublesize frame area could provide. The Bluray is very sharp with negligible wear, and reproduces the Technicolor hues beautifully, but there are some odd pulsating grayish streaks visible across some of the darker scenes. Strangely this widescreen epic was not made with a stereo soundtrack, although the original mono sound is well-represented on the Bluray, with minor age-related artifacts.

There is no director commentary, but the main bonus feature is an interesting half-hour making of documentary from 2002, interspersing clips and photos hosted by director Richard Fleischer recalling various aspects of its production. There is also a trailer to the film as well as an appropriate selection of trailers to four other films with the same stars or director (all conveniently on Bluray from Kino). The disc also includes optional English subtitles.

THE VIKINGS on Bluray – Movie: A / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: C+

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