The Mark of Zorro (1940)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Rouben Mamoulian

Writers:

John Taintor Foote (screenplay)
Garrett Fort (adaptation) ...

Release Date:

8 November 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Romance | Western

Tagline:

Ride With Zorro . . . The Dashing Don Of California's Most Adventurous Era !

Plot:

A young aristocrat must masquerade as a fop in order to maintain his secret identity of Zorro as he restores justice to early California.

Plot Keywords:

California | Fop | Justice | Secret Identity | Spain

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Tyrone Power	...	Diego
Linda Darnell	...	Lolita Quintero
Basil Rathbone	...	Captain Esteban Pasquale
Gale Sondergaard	...	Inez Quintero
Eugene Pallette	...	Fray Felipe
J. Edward Bromberg	...	Don Luis Quintero
Montagu Love	...	Don Alejandro Vega
Janet Beecher	...	Senora Isabella Vega
George Regas	...	Sergeant Gonzales
Chris-Pin Martin	...	Turnkey
Robert Lowery	...	Rodrigo
Belle Mitchell	...	Maria
John Bleifer	...	Pedro
Frank Puglia	...	Propietor
Eugene Borden	...	Officer of the Day

Also Known As:

The Californian (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

94 min | Portugal:90 min (censored version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Canada:G (Manitoba/New Brunswick/Nova Scotia/Prince Edward Island/Quebec) | Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Approved (certificate #6597) | Australia:G | Finland:S | Germany:12 | Portugal:M/12 | Sweden:Btl | UK:U

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

Like most of the actors who portrayed Zorro at around this time, 'Tyrone Power (I)' was not of Hispanic heritage (he was of British descent).

Goofs:

Continuity: When the padre leaves the cell he has a pistol in his right hand. When he starts hitting the soldiers, he has a tree limb in his right hand. When the Alcade resigns, the padre escorts him the pistol is back in his right hand.

Quotes:

Fray Felipe: To think that the boy that I helped to raise, the boy that I taught to hold a firm wrist behind a true point, has turned into a puppy! Bah!
Don Diego Vega: Well,! Tsk, tsk, tsk! How vexatious!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1995) (V)

A masterpiece of screen Swordplay...

Tyrone Power - the swashbuckling answer to Errol Flynn - is cast as the agile masked avenger who decides to take up the people's cause in disguise leaving his 'mark' "Z" everywhere, on walls, coach, wooden barrels and human chest...

Power - in a double leading role - is at his best as Zorro, climbing, jumping, riding and fencing, determined to finish with tyranny and oppression by terrorizing, and retrieving taxation funds and by challenging a cunning officer, proving in public his indifference, his ostentation and irony as a perfect pacifist fop in 19th-Century Spanish California, confusing and deceiving his aristocratic father Don Alejandro Vega (Montagu Love), the deposed Alcalde...

The inspired casting (in supporting roles) recalls "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

Linda Darnell is the pretty Lolita, Quintero's charming niece, who loves the mysterious hero and can't tolerate the fop until she is told that they are the image of the same person...

Basil Rathbone, one of the most durable of screen villains who has mastered stage fencing but never won a Swordfight, plays the cruel captain Esteban Pasquale, the Alcalde's military adviser... He is a second-rate soldier of fortune who leads the campaign of frustrating taxation, who considered Diego "a fancy clown" but who suggests a practical plan, an alliance for the good of the state...

J. Edward Bromberg is the cowardly Alcalde, Don Luis Quintero, a corrupted thief, enemy of the people, whose tyranny and avarice are always enforced by the treachery of his iron hand, the rigorous captain Esteban...

Eugene Palette plays the mission 'fat' priest (Father Felipe) who ignores that Diego is the opposing force...

The high point of the picture is the fantastic duel between Power and Rathbone, a masterpiece of screen Swordplay...

Rouben Mamoulian succeeds in making two great stars dance to an unheard music... With a touch of a great filmmaker, Mamoulian mixes harmoniously movement and action, decor and lightning with rage and turmoil, heroism and romance...

Under Alfred Newman's Oscar-Nominated score and despite the unusual absence of Technicolor, the film (the first of the great Tyrone Power swashbucklers ) is great fun, full of vitality and suspense, an exciting, deliciously ironic swashbuckler...