A Masterpiece!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The Flame and the Arrow is a classic Saturday matinée swashbuckler that doesn't try or pretend to be anything else, and as such it's one of the best of its genre. This 1950 technicolor feature rises above B status because of its incisive direction by Jacques Tourneur, a veteran Hollywood genre film maker best remembered for the noir classic Out of the Past and the horror classic Cat People, and also because of the spectacular athletics of an astonishingly youthful Burt Lancaster.There's also an effective sound track by major film composers Max Steiner; Virginia Mayo as the love interest stands around very prettily, which is about all you expect the female love interest in a movie like this to do. It's the sort of film you might have thought was the best movie ever made when you were fifteen years old, and can still enjoy fifty years later. It's available in various DVD releases; I saw it on the Turner Classics DVD, which was an OK transfer of a rather muddy print; this film should really be remastered and put on Blu-Ray.

It is the best movie from my childhood. I love the 1950s and thats family movies. Burt Lancaster is one of the greatest movie stars and he plays perfect in this family action movie. He was (is) my Idol and of course Virginia Mayo is beautiful, soft and romantic and I love her too. Nick Cravat has always been one of my favorites. The Manus script is very good when we think about the replies and words. There is not a moment of dead, boring time in the hole movie's duration. Italian People like each other and fight together against the occupation force. It is a light family action with love, sympathy and honor. So I'm very glad now when I can watch this film again with DVD quality. I miss these great and lovely Stars very much.

While this isn't the best adventure film I have ever seen, it might just be the highest energy film and featured stunts you just won't see in films by Errol Flynn or Ronald Coleman. That's because the star, Burt Lancaster, does most of his own stunts--having been a circus performer in a previous career along with his partner, Nick Cravat! It's obvious that he is one of the most athletic leading men in history and apart from his film, TRAPEZE, it's the most incredible stunt-work you'll see him do on film. A couple years after making this film, Lancaster returned for THE CRIMSON PIRATE--a better film, but one that features less of the athleticism of THE FLAME AND THE ARROW. It is interesting that Lancaster's circus partner, Nick Cravat, also plays his best friend in this film and several others (such as THE CRIMSON PIRATE). Some of their stunt-work together is truly amazing.As far as the plot goes, it's a reworking of the Robin Hood story, but this time it's set in Lombardy (a region in North-central Italy that includes Milan) and the invaders are Hessians (from the region around Frankfurt, Germany). Apart from that, the story elements are very, very similar. Even the part played by Virginia mayo is a copy of Maid Marian from Robin Hood. However, despite being a bit recycled, the film is exciting and fun--if also a bit like "fluff". Good old fashioned, but not especially deep fun, it's a must for Burt Lancaster films--he's dynamite.

This is a film to watch without major pretensions and being aware that it's an unrealistic costume adventure with a lot of comedy in it. It is an all Burt Lancater vehicle of his early days when Errol Flynn was aging and the top movies swashbuckler throne was empty (Tyrone Power was looking for more serious roles). Lancaster repeated the experience two years later and very successfully too with "The Crinsom Pirate" and then he turned to westerns and more compromising roles which he did very well indeed too.In "The Flame and the Arrow" Lancaster is side kicked by his friend and previous days circus mate Nick Cravat and both deliver their acrobatic skills while fighting tyranny in the person of mean Hessian ruler "The Hawk" played by Frank Allenby. Robert Douglas is there too in another of his accurate villain performances. The feminine presence was brought by Virginia Mayo a regular damsel in distress in costume adventures in the 50's.I remember I enjoyed this film very much when I first saw it as a kid and so did all my friends. Perhaps today it would not be very interesting for youngsters, but in my opinion it hasn't lost its undeniable charm and I'm sure those of us who saw it back in the early 50's can remember the theatre in which we saw it some fifty years ago.