By all accounts Robert Taylor was a thoroughly amenable chap who was grateful for his success and never made waves. MGM certainly kept him gainfully employed and this film based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott is the third of three costume films he made between 1951 and 1955 and all directed by Richard 'one take' Thorpe.
This is undeniably the weakest of the three and fared worst at the box office but there is much to recommend it.
The lush score is by Bronislau Kaper, standing in for Miklos Rozsa, whilst everyone and everything looks fabulous courtesy of cinematographers Christopher Challis and Desmond Dickinson. Robert Morley is excellent but totally miscast as Louis X1 although if you can believe Taylor as a Scotsman you can certainly believe Morley as the 'Spider King'! Ably supported by Alec Clunes, Marius Goring and an outrageous Duncan Lamont as the 'Beast of the Ardennes' whose fight with Durward on bell ropes is the films highlight. Taylor of course is personable, unpretentious and impossible not to like. His best scenes are with Kay Kendall. Indeed how could any actor not shine opposite this divine, delectable actress so cruelly taken by Leukaemia at the age of thirty-three. Producer Pandro S. Berman freely admitted that his films were designed solely to entertain and this one certainly fulfils that criterion.
Review of Quentin Durward
