The Sword and the Rose (Walt Disney; RKO Radio) is an old-fashioned piece of historical romance done with stylized charm and sly wit. Based on Charles Major’s popular 1898 novel, When Knighthood Was in Flower, it tells the love story of Princess Mary Tudor (1496-1533) and Captain of the Guard Charles Brandon. Before the two lovers were married in 1515, Mary had to overcome the objections of her brother, King Henry VIII, submit to a short-lived political marriage with aging, ailing King Louis XII of France, and, according to the movie, contend with the machinations of the malevolent Duke of Buckingham, who wanted the princess for himself.
A rich combination of high romance and low melodrama, the picture has a fine archaic atmosphere. Examples: the brilliantly Technicolored pageantry of a court dance, a royal game of shuttlecock, Henry VIII riding to the hunt, a contest between French and English wrestling champions at Windsor Castle.
As Charles Brandon, Richard Todd is equally adept at gathering a nosegay for the princess, writing her a sonnet, and fighting off the evil duke and his henchmen. Portly James Robertson Justice plays a younger and more forceful Henry VIII than the one Charles Laughton has made familiar to moviegoers. As Mary Tudor, elfin-faced Glynis Johns, with her wryly insinuating voice, gives a winning characterization of a conniving little royal baggage.
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