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favourite lovers: part 3. robin hood / lady marian fitzwalter

I’ve nothing to offer you but a life of hardship and danger, but we’d be together. //  Because I love you, Robin, I’d come. Even the danger would mean nothing if you were with me.

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Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

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OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND and ERROL FLYNN in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) dir. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley

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ERROL FLYNN & OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) — dir. Michael Curtiz & William Keighley

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they just don’t make em like they used to

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Errol Flynn as Robin Hood

Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

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The Adventures of Maid Marian

…or, in praise of Olivia de Havilland. No one asked for this commentary, but here I am. I love Maid Marian’s arc in the 1938 Robin Hood so much. Because this film makes clear that retelling everything from her perspective would also be really interesting. And it makes this clearest in a scene less than 20 minutes from the conclusion, a final act heightening of tension. This film. The Normans are Nazi-coded, and in the lead-up to the final showdown, when Prince John is going to get himself illegitimately crowned as dictator king, Marian is arrested for the treasonous crime of… trying to inform the rightful king. “Are you not ashamed, Lady Marian?” intones Basil Rathbone, magnificently.

Her reply, in a superb speech, is that her only shame is that she shares an identity with these assholes and that because she herself was a Norman, she wouldn’t let herself believe that what they were doing was not just and right. That is a hell of a confession. And she makes it while shot like this, an isolated figure, flanked by powerful men who will condemn her to death for being a traitor to their cause and her race:

This is the framing for Marian’s journey. “You’ve led a very sheltered life, my lady,” says Robin, gently, about halfway through the film. “Too sheltered, perhaps.” For a solid third of the film, she is outraged and dismayed by this man and his conduct. At least outwardly. It is only in that final trial scene that we learn explicitly about her cognitive dissonance (Olivia de Havilland is a good enough actress to put that across anyway; all hail.) So, what does this narrative look like as the adventures of Maid Marian? This impudent so-and-so beats up four soldiers with a deer – a poached deer; the evidence of his crime – and then dumps the carcass on the table in front of both her and the highest local and royal authorities. And he just… doesn’t care?

“What you hope can hardly be important,” she says, her breath coming a little too quickly. This is the first time she’s seen anything like this violence (or, obviously, this man, ahem) up close. And it’s about to get worse. He speaks treason (fluently) and then the man to whom she is all-but-betrothed gives a terse command and a spear thuds into the back of Robin’s chair. Another woman screams, perhaps envisioning the intended outcome, the brains on the floor. And in the ensuing chaos Marian learns that all the men surrounding her, the society in which she has moved her whole life, views Robin’s escape as a greater threat to their honor than the act of turning the forces of a garrisoned castle against one unarmored man.

But still. He broke the law, after all. Repeatedly. The ensuing weeks bring a crime wave the likes of which Nottingham has never seen.

This is wrong, isn’t it? This is unthinkable, isn’t it? Isn’t this a reversal of the natural order and an offense against it? Well… maybe not. Maybe not, if this strange man really does just want to provide food instead of hunger, warm clothes instead of rags, kindness to those who have known little, and to ensure that the wealth of an exploited country goes to redeem its king. He’s a strange man, but, strangely, it turns out that he’s trying to fight injustices the effects of which she has never before seen. And he doesn’t reproach her or express impatience; he just… looks at her like this??

And then she learns that it is not beneath a prince to use wealth and force and trickery to entrap one man who has defied him. She watches Robin (again, unarmored and unarmed) go down beneath half a dozen men and come up bleeding. She is forced by the men in whose power she is to witness his condemnation, the new bruises on his face telling their own story. And it is at this point that Marian snaps. She takes her reputation and her safety in her hands, and decides that those are well-risked if it means a chance of preserving his life. When he learns this, of course, he risks it over again simply to see her and thank her, and then – to his delight and surprise! – to learn that she returns his love.

If a power couple does not have this level of… everything… going on, I am not interested. I have been spoiled. And it is because she refuses an elopement with him (very explicitly offered as such) that she ends up condemned to death. Of course, he saves her life as she once saved his, and she goes straight into his arms despite the fact that he’s covered in blood and sweat and she’s been wearing the same dress for days. I love her (and them) so much. I am also salty about the fact that so few Robin Hood adaptations have managed to achieve a Marian with an arc this interesting.

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Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) dir. Richard Marquand

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"but physical media is worse quality and will break with time" I DON'T CARE! I WANT TO OWN THINGS I LIKE! I WANT SHELVES FULL OF DVDS, CDS, AND A LIBRARY!

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Calling somebody else fat won't make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn't make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George's life definitely didn't make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.

ENDLESS LIST OF PRODUCTIONS I LOVE: ↳ Mean Girls (2004) dir. Mark Waters

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playing with snoopy like a dress up doll…

now selling as stickers (minus cowboy snoopy since i didnt have the money)

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making every conversation into being about The Character with the same reliability and conviction of a youth pastor going “you know who else partied? our lord and savior”

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Window wings, fragile panes Shield me from the dark Warm me with your spark

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by Y.O.T.A.