The legend of Zorro – the cunning swordsman and masked champion of 19th century California’s downtrodden masses – has been adapted to the big screen and television dozens of times since his story was first told by pulp writer Johnston McCulley more than a century ago. Originally appearing in a novel published in five installments under the title of The Curse of Capistrano in the pages of All-Story Weekly in 1919, Zorro galloped onto the big screen the following year in The Mark of Zorro, directed by Fred Niblo and starring Douglas Fairbanks, the actor who essentially invented the swashbuckling movie hero.
The silent Zorro of 1920 is a fun romp, but I’m partial to the version that followed twenty years later with the same title. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian with Tyrone Power in the title role, The Mark of Zorro premiered 85 years ago this month in November 1940. To this day, it’s one of the most well-known and popular interpretations of the character.
The story is set in the 1800s. Young Don Diego Vega has finished his military training in Spain and has been called home by his father (Montagu Love) to Alta California, a province of New Spain on the western coast of North America (an enormous chunk of the First Mexican Republic that now comprises all of California, Utah and Nevada, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming and Colorado). When Diego arrives, he discovers that his father, Alejandro, has been ousted from his position as alcalde (the rough equivalent of a mayor) and replaced by the corrupt Don Luis Quintero (J. Edward Bromberg), whose exorbitant taxes and abusive regime have created an oppressive climate for the peons.
In response, Diego assumes the guise of el zorro (“the fox”), riding a fast horse and wielding an even faster sword to push back against the tyranny and corruption of the new regime. In his wake, he leaves his telltale mark – a Z carved on stucco walls, wine barrels, soldiers’ uniforms, and everywhere else – as both a warning to corrupt authorities and a symbol of hope for a community where hope is in short supply.
But when the mask is off, Diego maintains a foppish persona to avoid suspicion and invite disdain – not just from Capitan Esteban Pasquale (Basil Rathbone), the alcalde’s military aide, but also from his own friends and even his father. His ongoing flirtation with the alcalde’s wife (Gale Sondergaard) in his annoyingly mild-mannered guise is just another layer of mischief to vex the existing power structure. He even keeps up the charade in the presence of Lolita, the alcalde’s beautiful young niece played by 17-year-old Linda Darnell. This part of the game is possibly the greatest challenge for Diego, who is actually crazy in love with her.
This movie is filled with great set pieces: Zorro hijacking the alcalde’s horse-drawn cab in broad daylight and stealing his money and his wife’s jewels; an epic sword duel to the death between Diego and Pasquale; Diego breaking out of prison after his alter ego has been discovered and rallying a small army of peons to rise up against the military.
(Power’s swordsmanship in this film, by the way, is the real deal. Rathbone, whose fencing skills were unparalleled among Hollywood actors at the time, called him “the most agile man with a sword I’ve ever faced before a camera.”)
But one of the best moments is so fleeting and understated that it’s easy to miss. In the first ten minutes of the story, Pasquale explains the circumstances of Alejandro Vega’s “retirement” to Diego. With the camera tight on Power’s face, Diego responds with a noncommittal “I see.” His expression changes. Once stern and resolute, his features and demeanor suddenly soften into something more benign and non-threatening.
The moment demonstrates how well Power understands the character, and how quickly the character’s steel-trap mind starts thinking several steps ahead of his adversaries. With a single delicate wave of his handkerchief, Diego instantly slips into the role of the silly popinjay – a ruse that he maintains for most of the story – to deflect any suspicion about what he’s really up to.
At the time of the movie’s release, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther suggested that The Mark of Zorro came at a time when audiences were reaching a saturation level with masked heroes on the big screen.
“Your regular movie-goer of late has become more or less blasé over the doings of various Lone Rangers and heroes of the Masked Marvel stamp,” Crowther wrote. “So there may not be quite the same old punch that there was twenty years ago in this story of the dashing young Spaniard who rode mysteriously through the night, performing great deeds of daring with reckless imprudence in order to rid the land of a cruelly oppressive tyrant.”
More recent assessments have been more favorable. Film historian Tom Milne called the movie “a masterpiece of the genre,” and the Library of Congress entered it into the National Film Registry in 2009 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Like its silent predecessor in 1920, Mamoulian’s version of The Mark of Zorro twenty years later is an entertaining ride, but one that balances repeated episodes of derring-do with well-developed characters and solid plotting.
As for Crowther’s theory about masked-man fatigue in 1940, he may have been onto something. In the past few years, the long parade of superhero movies that dominated the box office every summer for the first two decades of this century seems to have lost some of its momentum. But as long as corruption and injustice persist – on the big screen or in the real world – I don’t know if our collective fascination with the mysterious but benevolent champion who rebalances the scales and leaves behind a cryptic but inspiring calling card will ever go away completely.