Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 1, 2023

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Cohen's Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature: Robin Hood / The Black Pirate release.

There's an old adage that states "the more things change, the more they remain the same", and with regard to hugely budgeted "event movie" epics like Douglas Fairbanks used to star in, that's certainly still the case today, but in terms of a man actually like Fairbanks himself, maybe not quite so much. Fairbanks was a rare commodity in the film world even during his heyday, and you'd be relatively hard pressed to find a suitably analogous person who came along after Fairbanks, since Fairbanks wasn't just at one point the most popular male movie star in the world, he also helped found United Artists, and frequently also contributed to his many films as producer and/or writer (sometimes uncredited or under a pseudonym). Cohen has aggregated two of Fairbanks' best remembered silents on one disc, with this disc evidently offering the Blu-ray debut of Robin Hood.

If several online data aggregators are to be believed, there were already a handful of Robin Hood silents before Douglas Fairbanks picked up the bow and quiver and donned (presumably green) tights to embody the role, but Fairbanks' 1922 opus probably helped establish the standard for big budget epic treatments of the story, and in fact simply looking at the running time of this elaborate production may indicate just how big it was in many ways. This version of Robin Hood spends a bit more time than might be expected leading up to the point where the Earl of Huntingdon (Douglas Fairbanks) does don those aforementioned tights and picks up his weapons, but the basic outlines of the tale are going to be familiar to anyone who has seen more contemporary iterations.

That aspect may actually make this particular version seem a tad bloated, at least in its early going, but even as the Earl (as opposed to as Robin Hood), Fairbanks gets to strut his athletic stuff. The film is also notable in that Alan Hale Sr. ( not junior who memorably portrayed the Skipper on Gilligan's Island) portrays Little John in both this feature and the beloved classic 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood ). The film also offers Wallace Beery as King Richard the Lion Hearted and Enid Bennett as winsome Maid (actually Lady in this version) Marian.

Fairbanks wasted no expense in bringing this epic to the screen, and it shows in some of the spectacular sets in particular. My hunch is 1922 audiences were probably gobsmacked by it all, including the outsized running time, and a lot of that sense of wonder persists to this day, even if the running time seems like it could have easily been shorn of a half hour or more.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Robin Hood is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection, an imprint of Cohen Media Group, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. The back cover of this release offers a brief description that the restoration stems from "a full frame 35mm fine grain positive [that] was scanned at 4K, with 175 hours of digital clean up in 2K". The results are largely commendable, with a nicely organic appearance that shows no signs of aggressive filtering, and some really appealing tinting that may not reach the evocative heights of the two strip Technicolor process used for this disc's sibling The Black Pirate, but which is often quite expressive in its own right. That said, I'd probably argue that the most consistently impressive fine detail levels tend to be in the "traditional" black and white sequences, though generally speaking detail levels are quite good throughout. As should probably be expected, there's manifest age related wear and tear on display, much like what I discussed in The Black Pirate Blu-ray review, which whatever restoration gauntlet was undertaken hasn't been able to completely remove, but there's nothing overly distracting or problematic in my opinion.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Robin Hood features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 rendering of what a closing text card states is a "music score compiled from historic photoplay music by Rodney Sauer". The score is performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, with violin, trumpet, clarinet, cello and piano, and has an enjoyable chamber music-esque flair. Fidelity is fine throughout, and there's an appealing warmth to the track.

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Cohen is offering the two Fairbanks films on one disc, with the following supplements, all of which were previously offered on Kino Lorber's release of The Black Pirate. I'm listing them here for convenience sake, but since none of them pertain to the film under discussion, I've left the bonus items score above at zero:

• Archival Audio Commentary for The Black Pirate by film historian Rudy Behlmer (HD; 18:05)


• The Black Pirate Outtakes with Commentary by Rudy Behlmer


• Additional Outtakes from The Black Pirate (HD; 29:05)

Robin Hood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Robin Hood is a rather interesting watch despite what some may feel is a somewhat padded length. It's kind of fascinating to see how many later iterations of this tale took some of Fairbanks' ideas and ran with them, rather like what subsequent pirate films did after The Black Pirate. Technical merits are generally solid, and even without any supplements devoted to this film, Robin Hood comes Recommended.