I am not quite sure why I was so disinterested in Henry Hathaway's The Black Rose. Perhaps it is Cécile Aubry as the protagonist's love interest... she's twenty-one or so, but she looks much younger because she's very short, and so the love between her and Tyrone Power never really registers as believable. She isn't a bad actress per se, acquitting herself well in a scene where she declares her love for him, but I just never bought his attraction for her. She just looks like a little kid.
I think, too, The Black Rose suffers from not having any narratives about the sea. I am used to seeing Tyrone Power on a ship, and this adventure narrative covers an overland trip through medieval Persia to China. This has its appeal, and there are some cool scenes, but Power feels kinda trapped.
In any case, despite being a very expensive and beautifully designed epic, this is just not that great. It's narratively wonky – it should have been more like two and a half hours instead of just two – missing big chunks of important travel and information. And its nationalist politics feel really on the nose: Power plays a Saxon who hates the Normans even though it's 200 years after the Conquest. What he needs to learn is that he loves his nation, and that's more important than who runs it... or something like that? The lesson is unity: we love this land where we were born, and so Saxon and Norman can work together for its glory. (I.E. Put aside all of your complaints about what a bad job I'm doing running this country, and stop complaining about all of the injustices you've suffered under my illegitimate colonial reign, and think of the land.)
I am skeptical.
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