[ReformationFan]

Today's feature is the first color version of Sir Anthony Hope's classic swashbuckler about an English commoner impersonating his royal identical cousin in order to save the throne of Ruritania. Good fun and one of Stewart Granger's best vehicles while Deborah Kerr is lovely and charming as Princess Flavia. The sword fight between Granger and James Mason's villainous Rupert of Hentzau is a classic. Also contains a good message, i.e., people sacrificing for a greater good, an unheard message in the average modern day Hollywood pic.

[ReformationFan]

Here is Christian Spotlight on Entertainment’s review of the film-

http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2000/theprisonerofzenda.html

and for a follow up, this is “Get Smart”’s funny take on the same story in “The King Lives?” episode-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SXQBmGUabU

[Sans-Culotte]

I prefer the earlier Ronald Colman version myself. I remember reading that Richard Thorpe would run the old version and basically duplicate the scene in the remake. Both are good, with great casts; I just like the old one a bit more.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

As an odd note, in his parody novels of 19th Century British history, the author George McDonald Fraser used his antihero Sir Harry Flashman in a more fleshed out version of The Prisoner of Zenda, in his novel Royal Flash.

Fraser’s novels were noted for their fairly close approximation of the rather outrageous times of the British Empire in that period, along with many of the world’s real villains and scoundrels they contended with.

The first in the series, titled just Flashman, is an extraordinarily good history of the fall of British Afghanistan. It is bawdy, treacherous, cowardly, and features perhaps the worst military commander in history, General Elphinstone, who turned retreat into a terrible disaster. With of course, Flashman smack in the middle of things.