THE CORSICAN BROTHERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 162, 31 July 1942, Page 16

THE CORSICAN BROTHERS

(United Artists)

ORE to my taste than the antediluvian antics of the film above are the 19th century heroics of the Corsican Brothers. These twin pro-

ducts of Siam and the island of vendetta are both Douglas Fairbanks jun., who, as it happens, can’t seem to make up his own mind whether he is himself or Ronald Colman. All this is not quite so confusing as it may sound, since the Brothers, who were cut apart by a skilful surgeon at birth, are plainly distinguishable once they are in two pieces one being very rich, happy, and romantic, the other very poor, sad, and repressed. One is brought up by aristocrats in Paris, and falls in love with a countess; the other is reared by Corsican peasants, and hasn’t a ghost of a chance with the fine lady. And as if this were not enough, the poor fellow got the worst of the operation, and as a result, has to suffer a kind of lumbago whenever his more fortunate brother miles away gets pinked with a sword in a duel or even is smitten by one of Cupid’s darts. But the Brothers have more than a nervous system and a lady-love in common: they share a deep and undying hatred of the bold, bad baron (Akim Tamiroff), who wiped out their parents and every member of their family except themselves, and they are determined not only to be avenged but also to rid Corsica of the whole system of vendetta. Their method of achieving this desirable end is to destroy the bold, bad baron root and branch (for their own sakes, one can only hope that they made a better job of it than the b.b. baron himself did, for b.b. barons are likely, to have roots and branches in unexpected places, aren’t they?).

This baron-busting takes some doing. It involves the two halves of young Mr. Fairbanks in a great deal of swashbuckling swordplay, knife-throwing, horseriding and wall-vaulting, all of which I found enjoyably exhilarating and wholesomely escapist. I mean, this is honest-to-goodness melodrama. It isn’t a very zood film, and in some respects it is a rather poor one, but it spins an exciting yarn, and never pretends to do any more. I may mention that before seeing the show I was warned against falling into the same trap as a journalist in Auckland who expressed the opinion that somebody in Hollywood and not Alexandre Dumas must have written The Corsican Brothers, because he hadn’t been able to find a copy of the novel in the libraries. The explanation, I was told, was that the Dumas novel has only been translated into English fairly recently, though, of course, it has always been available in the French language. This is probably correct. I can’t say I very much care whether it is or not. All I can say is that if Alexandre Dumas didn’t write The Corsican Brothers, he certainly should have.