The Vikings (1958)

[moira finnie]

This is a thread in celebration of the movie, The Vikings. So put your brain on hold, and enjoy.

If you've never seen it, and decide to see this movie, I don't think you'll be disappointed, as long as you are expecting color, action, and visiting an exotic world you've never known. It was directed by Richard Fleischer and photographed by Jack Cardiff in Scandinavia with a bombastic and beautiful score by Mario Nascimbene, so the movie is gorgeous and loads of fun.

You may want to look away once or twice (when a bird heads for Kirk's head & when Tony gets tied to a pillar as the tide comes in) but it is strictly PG.

Some oddly memorable sights and sounds:


Tony Curtis wears the shortest tunics known to man in the Middle Ages.

A pigtailed Viking girl has hatchets thrown at her.

Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine, chewing the scenery like it was made by Wrigley's) jumps into a pit, bellowing "Odin!!"

Janet Leigh wears the tightest bodices in the Middle Ages. They were just waiting to be ripped.

Orson Welles picked up some pocket money as the narrator, (I suppose it helped pay for The Trial, so it was worth it) .

Not to be morbid, but this movie had one of the great funerals ever shown on film.

Harper Goff, the production designer (uncredited) of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea did a fantastic job on creating a world in the Viking's ships and the castles and villages.

The credits are a wonderful pastiche of the Bayeux Tapestries.

Some--not all, thank goodness--of the movie is highly educational.

Here's part one, though the entire movie is on youtube, and this film is on DVD too. I also love the norsemen who show up in Prince Valiant, The Viking Queen, and The Long Ships (a real howler, with Jack Cardiff as director and Sidney Poitier in a wavy wig) :
[youtube][/youtube]

[klondike]

One of the most beautifully shot, and worst cast, films of its decade.
For almost every plus of this film, and there were many, and none of them small, there was a thorny negative, most annoying perhaps because so many of them were so indefensible.
Did no-one bother to double check any real history?
Or was the goal from Day One to rewrite 30 years of Prince Valiant adventures for a grown up audience, festooned with widescreen blood, death & lust . . sort of Tristan & Isolde meets Spartacus?
Oh well, if Hollywood can sell us George Armstrong as a hero of noble principles, and Robert Rogers as a courageous American patriot, I guess we should at least try to choke-down Ernie Borgnine as a medieval Norse chieftain, whose landlocked British victims are all spineless poltroons . . .
Riiiiiight!
I recommend watching this one (for the first or fifth time) with one's tongue thrust firmly in cheek, and then rid the aftertaste therefrom with a big healthy draught of The 13th Warrior . . wherein everything is depicted correctly . . !

[jdb1]

I'm with Klonny. The last time I saw it, when I was broadcast a few months ago, it just didn't speak to me. Everyone looked so "Hollywood," and then there's the Kirk Douglas eeewww factor (muscles notwithstanding).

The first time I saw it - at Radio City or some other great big movie theater, I was just a little girl, and I was bowled over by the look of the movie. It is greatly diminished on the TV screen, and now that I'm old enough to appreciate other aspects of what makes a good movie, I found The Vikings to be wanting.

PS -- Do you, as I do think of this movie when you hear the Ricola alpenhorn playing its signature tune?

[ChiO]

You may want to look away once or twice (when a bird heads for Kirk's head & when Tony gets tied to a pillar as the tide comes in) but it is strictly PG....Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine, chewing the scenery like it was made by Wrigley's) jumps into a pit, bellowing "Odin!!"

When seeing it on the big screen in 1958, it wasn't the bird or pillar that propelled me under the theater seats. It was what happened right after the Jumpin' Ragnar. Owww-din!, indeed.

Did no-one bother to double check any real history?

And your point is...? Just be thankful for the red-hair gene.

And, yes, I recorded it the last time it was on TCM.

The Viiii-kings!

[klondike]

PS -- Do you, as I do think of this movie when you hear the Ricola alpenhorn playing its signature tune?

For me, it's whenever the Packers are playing the Minnesota Vikings, and their chief mascot (dressed like Erik the Red) blows the "score horn", a five-foot replica bull's horn that is frame-mounted behind the home end-zone, which they do to celebrate each of their sacks, first-downs, and scores (same idea as Tampa Bay's pirate-ship cannons).
Unfortunately, on two separate occasions last year, I got to hear it way too often!

[moira finnie]

So, you guys go to the movies for history?! You guys are disappointed that a movie featuring Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas seems too Hollywood? Jeepers, à chacun son goût and all that rot, friends, but I never said it was history, just fun.

[klondike]

Just be thankful for the red-hair gene.

Come now, you're not resurrecting that old canard about red hair originating in Scandanavia, are ye?
Even an Illinois jury understands genetics better than that!

[feaito]

This is a thread in celebration of the movie, The Vikings. So put your brain on hold, and enjoy.

I bought the DVD many years ago and I enjoyed it very much just in the way Moira wrote..."put your brain on hold and enjoy"...The same applies to the also mentioned "Prince Valiant". It's Hollywood hokum, but amusing! I recall that the DVD Edition also included a documentary.

[klondike]

Hey, 'Nando, I know exactly what you're talking about- I still cheer wildly when Wallace & his Scots defeat the English Army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Braveheart - even though Gibson staged it in a big ol' cow pasture, and there's no bridge, nor even a d*mn river!
It's called willing suspension of disbelief, and for science fiction, and horror genres, and most colorful historical dramas, it's virtually mandatory for full & unbridled enjoyment by the viewer.
But, come on, even those who adore & are thrilled by Gone With The Wind grind their teeth at least a little when the camera pans past that electric light bulb during the exodus of Atlanta, and even the staunchest Ford devotee has turned from the Apache attack in Stagecoach and wondered why those murderous pursuers didn't just shoot the horses.
I never said The Vikings can't be enjoyed, or even cherished - what I was getting at, perhaps obtusely, is that with just a little more effort & clarity of thinking, it could have been a much, much better film.

[feaito]

And what about the TV Miniseries "The Tudors" with Henry VIII looking like a Calvin Klein model and the Royal Wives resembling Victoria's Secret's beauties....?

[klondike]

And what about the TV Miniseries "The Tudors" with Henry VIII looking like a Calvin Klein model and the Royal Wives resembling Victoria's Secret's beauties....?

Aaaaaaaaaaagh!
Don't get me started, Fernando!
I wanted so badly to start following this series, hoping for the same type of fun, cool, smart extrapolation I discovered on other pay-channel historicals like "Rome" & "Deadwood" . . . .
But I just couldn't choke back my aesthetic revulsion, for the very reasons that you cited!
Could any person with a brain accept this narcissistic period voguing as being even remotely plausible?!!

[feaito]

And what about the TV Miniseries "The Tudors" with Henry VIII looking like a Calvin Klein model and the Royal Wives resembling Victoria's Secret's beauties....?

Aaaaaaaaaaagh!
Don't get me started, Fernando!
I wanted so badly to start following this series, hoping for the same type of fun, cool, smart extrapolation I discovered on other pay-channel historicals like "Rome" & "Deadwood" . . . .
But I just couldn't choke back my aesthetic revulsion, for the very reasons that you cited!
Could any person with a brain accept this narcissistic period voguing as being even remotely plausible?!!

Very badly cast, set and adapted. Obviously aimed to attract teenagers. When you cmpare stuff like this with fine period products such as the British TV Miniseries "Upstairs, Downstairs", the film "Nicholas and Alexandra" or "Young Victoria", where you realize the care they put in settings, costumes, hair styles, attitudes, trying to capture the flavour and aesthetics of the period, etc...

[klondike]

Very badly cast, set and adapted. Obviously aimed to attract teenagers. ...

Yes, you are absolutely right . . and come to think on it . . exactly my beef with the latest "Robin Hood" series that BBC tried to foist on American audiences starting back in Autumn of '08.
Might as well have called it "Pouty Hunks of Sherwood"!

[feaito]

Very badly cast, set and adapted. Obviously aimed to attract teenagers. ...

Yes, you are absolutely right . . and come to think on it . . exactly my beef with the latest "Robin Hood" series that BBC tried to foist on American audiences starting back in Autumn of '08.
Might as well have called it "Pouty Hunks of Sherwood"!