The Black Rose

During their escape from the Chinese palace, Tris shoots an arrow into the forehead of what is an obvious dummy.

It's the 13th Century when our heroes first leave England.

Walking through the Arab market, they pass tomatoes for sale, which are later thrown at them by children.

Tomatoes are a New World plant, and could not have been found in Old World markets prior to the voyages of Columbus in the 15th century.

The name of the warlord, Bayan, is alternately pronounced "By-an" (the correct pronunciation) and "Bay-an" by different actors throughout the film.

Last and least of Tyrone Power's three Technicolor swashbucklers for Fox is already struggling before we meet Cécile Aubry in the title role and you know the film is doomed.At a cost of £4 million at least it helped fund Orson Welles' 'Othello' shooting nearby in Morocco (in which some of the costumes also reappeared!

Who cares and who knows about the Black Rose? I don't.

Despite what many reviewers say here, sadly there is very little swashbuckling in this movie, which is it's major failing for me. A few arrows are fired, but there is no mano-e-mano sword fighting of any note, or effective battle scene action.

Henry Hathaway's dull, episodic, and talky The Black Rose does have the distinction of making me want to visit England. It appears to be a lovely land, but all the blather spouted by Jack Hawkins, Tyrone Powers, Cecile Aubrey, and Orson Welles about this, that, and your England, the discount psychology, the ridiculous accents, the over-complicated derring-do-very-little make this 1950 costumer almost unwatchable.

As other reviewers have observed, this is a difficult movie to rate with a single number. In some ways it is quite effective in its atmospheric period depiction.

This is a boy's film and I have grown up a little. Maybe I watched it on Talking Pictures, an English ' old ' film channel.

....was cast in Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece "Manon" before her Hathaway film;her career was short-lived but she triumphed in the field of series-for -the-whole-family with her "Belle et Sebastien" saga -four or five seasons-starring her own son,Mehdi El Glaoui.

This movie should be listed as an all time classic. For all its pageantry and adventure this film puts today's productions to shame.

We all know of course that Orson was more or less reduced to turning tricks to finance his own movies and I thought he'd hit rock bottom with Ferry To Hong Kong but this has it beat a country mile. Normally I would have been aware of a Henry Hathaway-Tyrone Power entry from Fox but this one came out of Left field and having seen it I'm not surprised.