PhilPaine.com

It’s doubt­ful that any­one will ever match the charm that Errol Fly­nn brought to the role of Robin Hood in 1938. The film still holds up well as an enter­tain­ing adven­ture, after 68 years. It helps that it was done in the superb colour process of that era — bet­ter, but more expen­sive, than the process used in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Robin Hood tales are sup­posed to take place in the Twelfth Cen­tu­ry, but they first appear in a series of folk bal­lads that emerged cen­turies after the time, though Piers Plough­man, writ­ten in 1370, refers to “the rhymes of Robin Hood”. The Robin Hood of the film, our Robin Hood, is essen­tial­ly the one cre­at­ed by the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry chil­dren’s writer and (bril­liant) illus­tra­tor, Howard Pyle. The film is fair­ly con­sis­tent with Pyle’s Robin. But for mil­lions of peo­ple around the world Robin Hood will always be Errol Fly­nn, and the myth­i­cal hero of Britain incar­nate in a rogu­ish and rib­ald Tasmanian.