You won't be disappointed!

Awesome Movie

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Maria Montez plays a French Countess in this film and headlines the show. She's barely in the film, for goodness sake! Her role could have been completely written out - it has no relevance to the story whatsoever. She must have been very important. Can someone explain?The story is set in Holland during the exile of England's King Charles II in 1660. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays the king and spends the film wooing farm girl Rita Corday (Katie). He, of course, is undercover. An interesting sub-plot is introduced when Robert Coote shows up at the farm claiming to be King Charles II and demanding food and lodgings. Cue humour. Unfortunately, there is too much humour in this film - it exists in nearly every scene which is not what I was wanting. I hoped for some actual historical fact so if you expect any truth you will be disappointed. It's basically a love story with some sword fighting. It could be set anywhere. However, I am glad that the Cavaliers won. I am a Cavalier as defined by my boys school changing-room etiquette. You showed your willy and that put you in either the Roundhead or Cavalier camp. We were only 5 years old and there were no teachers involved!

1660 and King Charles has been removed from the throne by the tyrant Cromwell,vi who never appears as a character in the film. The closest is Henry Danielle, in his usual villainous demeanor. His voice sounded like Richard Burton.The film gets bogged down with Douglas Fairbanks finding refuge in the house of a flower girl and farmer, with true love resulting.There was a guy, an actor pretending to be king, who really confuses things at certain points.The ending reminded me of "The Student Prince," where lovers must part for the king to pursue his responsibility.

Enoyable sketch of biography and adventure. It's Max Ophul's first American movie and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., was recently returned from honorable service in the U.S. Navy.It's well written, acted, and directed. It's about the exiled King Charles II, Fairbanks, and his temporary refuge in Holland before being restored to the throne of England.Let me see if I've got this straight. I don't want to have to dig it up in Wikipedia. It's the early 1600s. The Roundheads, under Oliver Cromwell, have taken over England lopped off the head of Charles I, Fairbanks' father, and routed Fairbacks himself. This Cromwell had lots of passion and warts. He cleaned things up his own way, disenfranchising the Cavaliers who supported the King.Cromwell died and, as often happens when a charismatic figure disappears, there were great arguments over what would happen next, who was the next ruler of England. The true test of a government's viability comes not when one man or party is in power, but when that power must be passed on. The Sunni and Shi'ite still haven't figured it out.The Cavaliers are generally thought of as adventurous, honorable, militaristic, individual aristocrats. There were several kinds of Roundheads, ranging from the oppressive and punitive Pilgrims to the pacifistic, egalitarian and humble Quakers. The Cavaliers believed in personal achievement, the Roundheads in the community. The Roundheads settled New England (Plymouth was the last port they'd touched in England), while the Cavaliers settled the South (see Charleston or the Carolinas, named after the King).In this movie, Fairbanks' Charles II is the honorable hero who finds satisfaction as a bus boy in a Dutch Inn. (Holland was a commercial and cultural force to be reckoned with at the time.) He falls for the pretty blond who hires him knowing nothing of his background.But the Roundheads are hunting for him and they're led by Henry Daniell at his most villainous -- flat black hat, black clothes, black cape, all symbols of their difference with the more colorful and flamboyant garb of the Cavaliers. Boy, is Daniell menacing.He and the other Roundheads, bent on eliminating the throne once and for all, want to lop off Fairbanks' head too, despite his fairness and his popularity back home. They fail. There is a spectacular sword fight in and around a Dutch windmill -- exciting but not nearly as well done as those in, say, "The Mark of Zorro" or "Scaramouche." Fairbanks must give up his fair-haired Dutch girl friend when he becomes king. He loves her and wants to marry her, but she has her responsibilities back in Holland. Who will take care of her tulip garden? (The viewer is permitted a slight chuckle here.) "I will treat these memories as roses," murmurs Fairbanks, "and put them in a box. I will come to you in dreams." It sounds better in Fairbanks' reading than it looks in print.Not bad, overall. A throwback to the black-and-white studio-bound films of the 1930s, with Tyrone Power or Errol Flynn as the hero.

In one of his BEST acting roles, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s second stint as a movie producer--and his first as a writer--is an ambitious attempt to dramatize the tale of the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England. An avowed Anglophile, Fairbanks has a strong sense of the history of his adoptive land. (He was born in New York City.) Fortunately, the drama and excitement of the pursuit of Charles Stuart (Fairbanks) after his return from self-imposed exile in Holland by Oliver Cromwell's Puritans is lushly displayed by the producer-author-star's insistence on a deliberate, poetic pace for the story. Much of the film is concerned with Fairbanks' trysting with the luscious Croset--later Paula Corday--in her first starring role, as a Royalist who conceals the fugitive king on her estate. Despite a strong supporting cast and an interesting concept, the film is a forgotten charmer!