The Age of Commercialism

It is a performances centric movie

From my favorite movies..

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Six foot, three inch Gary Cooper standing upright and passing through the palace guards undetected among the Chinese peasants (e.g. pretending to be a Chinaman himself) isn't the only unbelievable moment in this fictionalized biography of the great Venetian explorer.According to Robert Sherwood's screenplay, or N.A. Pogson's story, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Archie Mayo, Marco Polo (with help from Kaidu, played by Alan Hale) actually saved China, rescuing emperor Kublai Khan (George Barbier), and his daughter Princess Kukachin (Sigrid Gurie), from his own ambitious adviser Ahmed (Basil Rathbone), as well as bringing spaghetti and coal to Italy.Apparently Polo also discovered that the gunpowder China used to burn bright for celebrations and make firecrackers (as toys) could be also be utilized on a larger scale for weaponry (e.g. to blow up gates or bring down walls). Since historians question the facts surrounding this famed, mid-to-late 13th century trader-explorer, I'll not comment further on the validity of such claims.In the film, Ernest Truex plays Polo's traveling companion and bookkeeper Binguccio, Binnie Barnes plays Kaidu's wife Nazama, H.B. Warner plays the native Chen Tsu who helps Polo, Ferdinand Gottschalk the Persian Ambassador, Harold Huber plays Toctai, the assassin Ahmed sends to kill Kaidu, and Lana Turner plays Nazama's maid, who's coveted by Kaidu.Because his son is young and popular with the ladies (his disarming good looks?), Nicolo Polo (Henry Kolker) and some Venetian businessmen decide to send Marco (Cooper) to the East to establish trade agreements. First he travels by ship, but when it's wrecked by a storm, he and Binguccio (Truex) continue on foot through the desert and then the mountains of Tibet to China. He meets Chen Tsu and his humble family and learns that the emperor's adviser Ahmed (Rathbone) is not to be trusted.After his introduction by his father's letter, Marco quickly earns Kublai Khan's (Barbier) admiration when he helps to sort the emperor's concubine women, culling out the guessers and those who are too smart. Later, Marco is smitten with the Princess Kukachin (Gurie), to whom he introduces the Western custom of kissing, even though she's betrothed to the King of Persia. Lotus Liu plays the Princess's handmaiden Visahka. When Ahmed learns of it, he's threatened such that he convinces Khan to send Polo to a troublesome, overtaxed province to spy on its leader Kaidu. Ahmed orders Bayan (Stanley Fields) to kill the Venetian en-route; he reports back that he'd succeeded, prematurely.But Marco is captured by Kaidu's (Hale), though he's saved from execution by Kaidu's instantly smitten wife Nazama (Barnes). Kaidu sees an opportunity to spend time with his wife's maid (Turner) while Nazama is distracted by Polo. Ahmed convinces Khan to go with his troops to conquer Japan and is pleased to learn that the emperor's fleet was lost at sea. He decides that the Princess will be his wife, but she sends a warning by air (a hawk?) to Marco; conveniently, it's intercepted (shot down) by Kaidu's men.Marco insists that he must go, but is delayed by Kaidu. Marco then recognizes that Ahmed's assassin Toctai (Huber) has become entrusted as one of Kaidu's men. He plots Kaidu's assassination, but only in order to save the rebel leader and expose Toctai. This earns Marco the privilege of returning to the emperor's palace, where Khan himself had returned to find that Ahmed had the Princess in a precarious position, tied down under his vultures. This forced Khan to sign away his power and become Ahmed's puppet.Marco's first stop in Beijing is Chen Tsu's humble home, where he orders and/or commandeers all the flash power (e.g. gunpowder) for the wedding celebration between Ahmed and the Princess to create bombs capable of bringing down the palace gates. When Kaidu and his men arrive, Marco tells Kaidu the obvious (e.g. that his men should attack the gate tower), helping the rebels to take the palace so that Marco can rescue the Princess.The explorer is somehow adept enough to take on Ahmed singlehandedly and overpower him such that he falls into his own den of lions, where he's killed. A grateful King asks Marco to escort the Princess to Persia, a trip assured of being a long one (e.g. to the kissing partners delight).

Gary Cooper had a most interesting relationship with Sam Goldwyn. He did seven films with Goldwyn and a cursory glance at the titles shows that Goldwyn was constantly giving him better and more suitable material for him. With The Adventures of Marco Polo he could hardly have done worse.How can I say it, Gary Cooper just does not suggest a renaissance Italian Man. Unless they all had that Montana drawl. Contrast his performance here with Tyrone Power in Prince of Foxes or in The Black Rose where he plays an Englishman in the China of Kublai Khan. Power in this part would have made it believable. But Darryl Zanuck wasn't giving Ty Power's services away.To complete the film, cowboy Cooper is given a Smiley Burnette like sidekick in Ernest Truex. The two of them as the history books tell us, go off to the court of Kublai Khan to negotiate a trade agreement for Venetian merchants, particularly the House of Polo.There the real history stops as Cooper gets involved in all kinds of palace intrigue.Here's some of where Sam Goldwyn's casting gets positively zany. George Barbier is Kublai Khan and Goldwyn must have seen Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades where Barbier played King Sancho. Worked for C.B. it'll work for me. Sigrid Gurie was another Scandinavian import, another one trying to be another Greta Garbo. If Anna Sten didn't work, we'll make Sigrid a Scandinavian Mongol Princess. Best of all is Basil Rathbone as Ahmed, his Saracen adviser who plays the part just as if he was playing Guy of Gisborne. Rathbone carried it through however, he must have seen how all around him looked so he could hide in the crowd.H.B. Warner had the year before played the High Lama Chang in Lost Horizon. Here he's a clever fellow who shows Marco Polo this latest thing the Chinese have invented called gunpowder. Actually they'd had it for some time and the west had had it also, a fellow named Roger Bacon had written extensively and experimented even more extensively with the stuff a couple of centuries before. Never mind it took Gary Cooper to see its possibilities.Sam Goldwyn's sets were lavish and the battle scenes at the end very well staged. That it has nothing to do with any history is only a minor criticism, it does not succeed because of the unbelievable plot and incredible casting.

This is the film that cost LANA TURNER (in a bit role) her eyebrows which never grew back. Other than that, it has no distinction whatsoever except that it provides a nice comic book excursion into the past with lavish sets of Oriental splendor but little else for compensation.Still, it's watchable enough thanks to the low-key and quietly humorous performance of GARY COOPER (an unlikely choice for the role of the Italian adventurer from Venice). It's also interesting to watch SIGRID GURIE, fascinating in close-ups with Hollywood's brand of Oriental make-up--but an actress who never managed to be more than a passing fancy.BASIL RATHBONE adds the right touch of menace as Ahmed, the villain of the piece, and ALAN HALE brings his boisterous presence to the role of a man who was afraid of his lecherous wife (BINNIE BARNES) but not afraid to dispose of his enemies in boiling oil.It gets more laughable as it goes on, but reaches new heights of incredibility with an ending that has Polo making use of explosives to bring down the enemy camp. His final fight to the death with Rathbone, near an open trap door with hungry lions waiting below and vultures overhead, is the stuff of comic book suspense.If you can suspend all disbelief long enough to enjoy it, it passes the time quickly and entertainingly. A history lesson, it's not.

You either get it or you don't. Like most studio films, this movie was intended to make money by providing one thing - entertainment. Not a history lesson, not social commentary. Entertainment. Like the better realized but equally fake-medieval "Adventures of Robin Hood," released the same year (1938), "The Adventures of Marco Polo" (note the similar title) provides plenty of entertainment in the comedy-adventure genre that eventually led to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Evaluating either "Raiders" or "Marco Polo" on its historical accuracy misses the point. It's like asking how Marco is able to speak what must be flawless Mandarin, plus the language of Alan Hale's presumably Turkic people. If you gotta ask, the movie just isn't your style.Cooper looks a little less comfortable in this role than in some others, but he's adequately wry and intrepid, never taking the role of Marco too seriously. The rarely-seen Sigrid Gurie, whose face reminds one of Garbo, even through the Asian makeup, is beautiful and ethereal as the daughter of Kublai, played with Midwestern folksiness by the affable George Barbier. (Remember, it's not supposed to be real.) As Kublai's evil vizier, Basil Rathbone emanates the same elegant menace as he did in the role of Sir Guy in "Robin Hood." The ubiquitous Alan Hale, Sr., plays his usual self, and if you look carefully you'll see teenybopper Lana Turner in a small but fully credited role.Why aren't there any Chinese here in leading roles? Because first, the studio had big-name actors on contract and meant to use their box-office appeal to make a bundle. Second, despite the potentially impressive Asian-American talent pool in California no greed-driven executive would have counted on white audiences in 1938 to shell out Depression-era cash to watch Asian unknowns acting the leads in for-profit motion picture. "The Adventures of Marco Polo" is not "The Last Emperor," and it doesn't pretend to be. Nor is it a misconceived turkey like John Wayne's Mongol epic "The Conqueror" (1961). Instead it's only a great "family film" and simple adventurous fun in the pulp-magazine tradition.