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"On! On, ye men of the cross." Jerusalem seized by the Saracen picks up the blur of sanctity and prurience from Cecil B. DeMille's ancient Rome, here his medieval evangelism gets a thrill out of Christian icons hurled into pyres and nuns sold into slavery. That means little to King Richard the Lionheart (Henry Wilcoxon), "I have no love for monks and shave-pates," still a journey to the Holy Land comes in handy when ditching the "surly-tempered witch" he's betrothed to, Alice of France (Katherine DeMille). Out of one marriage and into another, Berengaria of Navarre (Loretta Young) at the altar to wed the ruler's sword because he won't leave a banquet. (The priapic blade enjoys its own progression from blacksmith's shop to matrimonial tent, and gets finally snapped in half for the greater good.) Royal lout meets determined bride, the true test of faith. "I won't destroy you." "Destroy me? Why, you've given me something to fight for." Quite the crowded illuminated manuscript, of great use to Eisenstein (Alexander Nevsky) and Olivier (Henry V) and Milius (The Wind and the Lion). Saladin the Conqueror (Ian Keith) cuts a majestic figure, staring down a roomful of European monarchs ("There is room in Asia to bury all of you") and nursing his enemy's maiden in a fortified garden. The storming of Acre is a storm of steel and arrows and fire under the aegis of "the Hermit" (C. Aubrey Smith) skewered like Saint Sebastian, DeMille's bravura montage makes sure to include a close-up of a luckless knight looking up at the camera seconds before boiling oil is poured from the walls. The happy ending is a prayer answered, "let them open the gates!" Scott's Kingdom of Heaven reconsiders the territory in the wake of Dubya. With Joseph Schildkraut, Alan Hale, C. Henry Gordon, George Barbier, Montagu Love, Ramsay Hill, Hobart Bosworth, Lumsden Hare, Pedro de Cordoba, and Mischa Auer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |