Not that bad - Great Orson Welles
Enjoyable medieval/middle eastern hokum with the great Orson Welles as a Mongol General. This should be released on DVD alongside similar 50s historical adventure epics like "Omar Khayyam" (56) and "Lydia Bailey."
"Prince of Foxes" is the better of the two Welles/Tyrone flicks. Better shots, better character for Orson, better casting, and less random of a story. It seems to me.
shareYou're probably right about "Prince of Foxes" vs. "The Black Rose", narrowly construed, but I find the latter much more enjoyable. It imparts a stronger sense of remoteness and far-off times and places than does "Foxes", at least to me. It's one of those films that improves with several viewings, and I've always thought it unfairly underrated. Although "Foxes"'s b&w cinematography is beautiful, "Black Rose"'s sumptuous Technicolor is an enormous asset and adds to the film's pleasures. Its somewhat subdued, even thoughtful, tone, compared to "Prince of Foxes"'s more typical action-and-drama spectacle, is both surprising and more interesting. I never thought Fox would release this to DVD, another nice surprise. Looking forward to having both overdue DVDs in my collection (plus the rest of the set).
shareI agree that color added enormously to the film. The story I heard was that Darryl Zanuck vetoed color for "Prince of Foxes" because he was mad at Power for stealing Linda Christian away from him, and he wanted the film to fail. It makes as much sense as anything else. "Foxes" cried out for color.
The Black Rose does indeed improve on later viewing, with Power at the top of his form and great support by Jack Hawkins (my personal favorite)... Too bad the leading ladies in both fields were so childish.
Yes, I heard that story about Linda Christian too. Nothing like sabotaging your own company's output. Brilliant ploy.
We have a thread on the PRINCE OF FOXES site as to whether it should have been filmed in color, if you're interested...many people have thought so over the years.
Very good observation about the nature of Power's leading ladies in these two films, POF and BLACK ROSE. Yes, very child-like, and not really satisfactory. More mature, alluring actresses would have been more suitable.
THE BLACK ROSE was the first film of the new Power set I watched and it's a beautiful transfer. And again, I found it much underrated and still improving with time and repeated viewings. Great British supporting cast, and Jack Hawkins is one of my all-time favorites as well (oddly, I just wrote a brief squib mentioning him on the board for his 1955 LAND OF THE PHARAOHS, and BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI has just started on TV as I write). Interesting to see Laurence Harvey in an early role, almost unrecognizable in his small part as the vicious "legitimate" son, Edmond, though I was never a big fan of him. It was this film that brought Michael Rennie to the attention of 20th Century Fox's London office, which the following year commended him to Zanuck as a good choice for Klaatu in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, the movie that made Rennie's career.
On THE BLACK ROSE DVD there's an interview with Power's son Tyrone Jr. (by his third wife, born after his death) and two daughters (Taryn and Romina) with Linda Christian, and with Ms. Christian herself. Remember what an extraordinarily ravishing beauty she was? You'll be shocked and appalled by her appearance today. Okay, she's not 22 anymore, but some people age well and some don't, and she clearly falls into the latter category -- as do her daughters, both of whom look terrible for women only in their early-mid 50s. Unbelievable. Ty Jr. looks fine, and even Linda says to him at one point that he's the handsomest man she's ever seen, including his father. I guess the girls (who facially resemble their father, though now very bloated) got their "aging" genes from their mother.