Irony of ironies- what was once a standard, big budget Hollywood blockbuster now seems a bit more like an art movie. The Mark of Zorro was an action adventures spectacle, and was received as such, but today there’s no doubt that no many audiences would have a problem with the movie’s leisurely pace. Aside from an impressive action sequence towards the end, no one seems to be in much of a hurry to get anywhere in this movie. Show this to the average action movie audience today and its likely that there would be large numbers of snores, in addition to a few snickers when Zorro is introduced as “The Gay Blade”.
However, an audience of movie fans will probably find much to love in this picture. The fact that the movie is slow means that the picture draws us into its world at its own pace, and the intent in a picture like this seems to be not as much to get us super excited as it is too look at the evocation of California in the 1840’s.
I sometimes think that silent films have there own type of beauty that was never seen since, perhaps because the intent is not a setting for actors to say their dialogue in but a painterly visual composition where the actors exist along the world the exist in. So much information is conveyed by the costumes, art direction and cinematography that at times it’s hard to believe that this was a star vehicle for Douglas Fairbanks, except when he’s on the screen, and dominates everything.
Fairbanks produced and co-wrote the film, adapted from the first Zorro novella, The Curse of Capistrano , published only the year before. With the exception of The Scarlet Pimpernel, audiences had never seen a character like Zorro- a Batman type character who performed his heroics while masked, with a secret identity. There could not have been a better choice for the character, as Fairbanks is a hero to ten year old boys of all ages. With an athletic physical presence and devil-may-care attitude, combined with an absolute knowledge of moral clarity, his Zorro is a hero for the ages, really, all superhero movies might in some owe something to this movie.
Despite the slow pace, the movie knows its audience well enough not to add too much unnecessary romance (isn’t kissing disgusting?) the film is pretty economical in its story telling. If doesn’t say too much about the human condition, well, I should point out that I wasn’t interested that much in that type of thing when I was ten either. The Mask of Zorro spoke the part of me that refuses to grow up, and so few movies acknowledge any kind of innocence that I kind of loved it for doing so.