Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938) (DVD)

One of Flynn's best, with his romance with the barely legal Olivia de Havilland on full display. The humor in this film is great, as is the acting, as are the stunts, as is the representation of the tale of Robin Hood.

What can you say it's an Errol Flynn movie these are the type of movies that he was made for I've seen many versions of Robin Hood and none of them can stand up to Errol Flynn's version Kevin Costner's was way too long in fact almost all of the causes movies are too long he don't know when to quit

STILL THE MOST ENTERTAINING ROBIN HOOD FILMAfter all the other attempts at telling the Robin Hood legend have come and gone, the Warner Bros. Errol Flynn version still entertains better than the rest. Shot on location in northern California for the outdoor sequences and on the Warner Bros. lot for many of the interiors and village scenes, this is a great Blu-ray offering that's loaded with behind-the-scenes features and commentary.COLOR, DETAIL AND MAGNIFICENT COSTUMESWhen upscaled on a 4k-capable Blu-ray player the detail in the colorful costumes looks even more startling and impressive. I grew up, like many, watching and rewatching this movie on black-and-white and then color televisions before the days of flat panel 4k TVs and I hadn't realized how much I was missing. There is another backstory to the restoration of this Technicolor film that the Blu-ray disc doesn't delve into suffice to say that new software was created to properly align the old and often warped strips of Technicolor film negatives and that's when the sumptuous detail of the costumes became evident.THE CAST AND THE ACTIONErrol Flynn was perhaps one of the more underrated actors of his time. If you watch any of his films, it's clear that he became the characters he portrayed even as grandiose or exaggerated as they were. This is a remarkably entertaining film for its action sequences, humor, and over-the-top romance. One forgives the historical inaccuracies for the sake of going along for the ride. Olivia de Havilland is a delight to look at and delivers another great performance. The Basil Rathbone / Errol Flynn sword fight alone is worth the price of this Blu-ray. Trigger Warning: You can also catch Roy Rogers' horse prominently featured in several scenes.A MUST-HAVEFor any serious student of film, this is a must-have for your collection because like Casablanca and so many other films made during Hollywood's Golden Age, it's a prime example of how entertaining, well-crafted, and well, just fun, the films were that came out of the studio system. If you have young kids, treat them with this Blu-ray offering.

It’s a great picture

Nice!

1. This review is focused on the film's original and historic film score as presented in this DVD-Video (DVD-V) release. The DVD-V contains two discs of a quartet of recent discs released on DVD and CD marking the 65th anniversary of the film (see reviews of the film's music on CD release Marco Polo 8.225268 and DVD-Audio release Marco Polo 5.220501).2. The Adventures of Robin Hood (TAORH) was Erich Wolfgang Korngold's (EWK) first (and only) score for a motion picture filmed in color (using the three-stripe Technicolor process then crossing over from experimental shorts to features). This is also the first film score to be broadcast pretty much intact, live, and on coast-to-coast radio (with Sir Guy of Gisbourne, recently recovered, narrating the story) in 1938. You can hear that broadcast on Disc 2. For Warner Bros., TAORH was the studio's first release of a full-color feature and the first with a budget of such magnitude (around two million USD all told which is pretty close to 200 million in today's movie-inflated dollars).3. Disc 1 contains much (but not all) of the original sound track (OST) processed for the first time in Dolby Digital which yields a spectacular restoration! Disc 2 includes a number of improvised excerpts from film scores played, hummed, and "sung" by the composer along with a bit of chatting (mostly protesting) by EWK-I believe this is the first time Korngold's voice has been heard in a commercial recording (shades of Garbo!).4. There are some problems with the audio recordings presented on this disc set. For starters, while the OST on Disc 1 contains most "major" cues (but not in their entirety), many others are missing (starting just a few minutes into the film). Given the history of how the OST recording was rescued from obliteration in the proverbial eleventh hour, we are indeed fortunate to have what we have. However, the cues presented on this disc are synchronized with a silent version of the film. This means that they end up being separated by all sorts of pauses (while dialog is occurring). Presenting a chopped up version of the OST as an adjunct to a de faco silent movie seems pretty dumb. Only those with an academic interest in matching cues with film scenes MAY find this of value-say about five folks on the entire planet! Next we have the "live" radio broadcast on Disc 2. This appears to be a complete version (at a little over 28 min), but it suffers from print through and wow&flutter, especially at the beginning. Given these tell-tale signs, this presentation does not sound like it was directly derived from original studio records. Perhaps of greater interest is that the miking/mixing is also decidedly different (and much improved) from an earlier, shorter version released on CD (Facet 8104, 1987, available from Amazon.com) which really sounds like a live recording!. So are we really hearing a live broadcast on Disc 2 or a post-broadcast studio recording? Finally, we have the "Erich Wolfgang Korngold Piano Session" also on Disc 2 (called "Korngold Scoring Session" on the back of the slip case) broken down into fragments from 12 listed film scores (and a few notes and bars from other ones). Although not acknowledged, all fragments come from a tape made in 1951 at a birthday for and at the home of Mr. Ray Heindorf (Music Director for Warner Bros.) with the composer as the honored guest (Heindorf also made the recording). (One fragment, "Love for Love" from ESCAPE ME NEVER, 1947, has appeared on at least three CDs and one laser disc, with the source usually not clearly acknowledged.) No fragment exceeds 2 min 30 sec, and several are less than 30 sec long. Fragmentizing as opposed to just running the tape end to end also seems pretty dumb. It is simply not the way to enjoy an impromptu session of Korngold at the piano.5. Bottom line: Buy this DVD set for the film (and supplemental video materials), but NOT for the OST and related recordings.William Flanigan, Ph.D.

Robin Hood es un personaje folclórico inglés que no se sabe a ciencia cierta si realmente existió. Y aunque Errol Flynn fue un actor australiano, emigra hacia los EE.UU. logrando un gran éxito. Y su éxito es tal, que logra encajar perfectamente en la sociedad americana, logrando ser visto como el arquetipo del "héroe americano": bien parecido y atlético, por lo que era el indicado para encarnar al mítico héroe inglés. Esta joya del cine es un clásico de la cinematografiar no sólo de estados Unidos, sino de todo el mundo, por lo que no debe faltar en una colección física de un amante del cine.Y aunque el Robin Hood personificado por Flynn resulta demasiado fanfarrón, su caracterización no resulta molesta, sino al contrario,es todo un deleite verlo en acción, desafiando descaradamente, por ejemplo, al poder político y militar del infame príncipe Juan. La fanfarronería del Robin Hood de Flynn, con frecuencia resulta divertida e hilarante y los chistes moderados, lo cual se complementa con el final heroico, un tanto predecible, de esta versión fílmica de la novela de Walter Scott.

Dont normally leave reviews. BUT what a classic movie! I named my son flynn. Hint hint! It was one of my childhood favourite movies, it was the greatest robinhood movie of them all. And its family friendly, watch it! What an Australian film legend, and what a great whole movie!

The other reviewers have provided the synopsis of the story this review is on the quality of this Blu-ray version. Even though this is a Blu-ray the video format is still the old "full screen", meaning the 4X3 (1.33:1) format. Unlike regular DVD 4X3 formats, this Blu-ray format fills the top and bottom of a 1080 screen so that only the left and right sides will be black.The video quality of such and old movie is very good. As always when converting older movies to Blu-ray there is a little grain throughout the movie but definitely nothing distracting. At first I thought all the colour had been enhanced because of its saturation and brightness but upon watching one of the special features on the making of Robin Hood, it stated that they wanted this movie to be extremely colorful and so used vivid reds, blues, etc to really enhance the colour properties of colour film. Apparently not too many movies were in colour at this time so they wanted Robin Hood to dazzle the audience with colour. The Blu-Ray definitely captures all this colour saturation. I think most viewers will be surprised as to bright and colourful this movie truly is.For those who love Special Features there a tons of them including the usual "Making of", history of Robin Hood, etc. According to the extras, The Adventures of Robin Hood is considered by many to contain one of the most perfect casts of actors of any Hollywood movie. Another little tidbit James Cagney was originally considered to play the part of Robin Hood. So lots of extras for those with insatiable appetites who need to know all about a movie.

Bien que le film soit d'avant guerre (1938) et au format 1,37/1, à l'heure des blockbusters, cette antique super-production reste d'une fraicheur inégalée pour son grand âge... avec un Errol Flynn au meilleur de sa forme (acteur mais aussi véritable aventurier bien avant "Indiana Jones"), une mise en scène incroyable avec de l'action, du suspens, des décores monstrueux, des cascades à gogo et un son d'une grande qualité pour l'époque...et le tout s'il vous plait en couleur et en HD ! seul petit reproche pas de sous-titres forcés en VF...

Desgraciadamente para los coleccionistas del buen cine cada vez más aparecen versiones de clásicos como Cita en San Luis, Horizontes de Grandeza, Misión de audaces, Centauros del desierto y está misma de Robin Hood editadas en España por empresas audiovisuales que sacan un producto con una calidad discutible, si no infame.Este blu-ray en concreto está editado por la MGM en los Estados Unidos y tiene las mismas características que la edición especial de dos DVDs editada en España, pero con una calidad de imagen y sonido original en inglés muy superior.Pero antes de decidirnos por este blu-ray hay que saber que la versión en español es latino, aunque resulta muy difícil identificarlo como tal porque debe ser un doblaje de la época y no corresponde a ninguno de los tipos de latino reconocibles. Además, la Metro no ha subtitulado los extras, que son muchos e interesantes, los mismos que en el DVD de España.Quizás la alternativa sea conservar esa edición especial junto a este bluray para tener la banda sonora en castellano y los extras subtitulados. Cualquier cosa antes que comprar esa edición barata que nos quieren imponer en España.