just watch it!

Beautiful, moving film.

An Exercise In Nonsense

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

In this first ¨Tulipe Noire¨ starred by Alain Delon took a chance and jumped from Film Noir , action genre to costumed comedy-adventures ; he steals the show as a masked hero relishing his secret identity on his horse called Voltaire and in cape and wielding sword ; executing bounds and leaps , twists and climbs and throughly enjoys himself . In 1789, at the beginning of French Revolution , an outlaw named "Black Tulip" held the surroundings of a town called Roussillon in fear . The inimitable Alain Delon in a double role as Julien De Saint Preux/Guillaume De Saint Preux, as he dons a black outfit and becomes the Black Tulip , the legendary masked , hero of oppressed who declares himself a revolutioner . Black Tulip riding in the hoof-prints, enjoys his hidden activity in black cape and wielding blade and helps the good people who are mistreated ,thwarting the ambitious plans of the meanie official , as the poor people respect him like a new Robin Hood . When he contends Baron Mouche (Adolfo Marsillach) , he was wounded , but then appears his twin brother . Meanwhile , he falls in love with gorgeous Caroline (Virna Lisi) . He battles against Marquis of Vigogne (Akim Tamiroff) , baron La Mouche and Prince of Grasillach (Robert Manuel) . Black Tulip's helped by a servant named Brignon (Jose Jaspe) and unites forces to Plantin (Francis Blanche), his beautiful daughter and revolutionaries .Derring-do , feats, adventures, humor and action find this agreeable swashbuckler . Alain Delon runs and jumps, bounds and leaps all over the images and Adolfo Marsillach overacting outrageously when plays the villain Baron . Black Tulip-Delon splendidly fights evildoers and greed oppressors , while saving his brother an the damsel in distress . Delon made the character of Zorro his own and quickly established himself as a French legend ; starring years later , a similar film titled ¨Zorro¨ by Duccio Tessari . Delon is terrific as the Black Tulip , well accompanied by ideal heroine , a pretty Virna Lisi . Nice cast keeps the picture moving at a rapid clip , special mention for Adolfo Marsillach as a grumpy and bungler baron in a sensationalistic and exaggerated performance . Being a French-Spanish co-production appears several secondary actors seen in usual genres of the 60s as Jose Jaspe , Alvaro De Luna, Jorge Rigaud , Enrique Avila , Perla Cristal and Laura Valenzuela , wife of film producer , Jose Luis Dibildos . The film is set during French Revolution , though was filmed in Spain, Sevilla Films, Madrid, (studio) and Trujillo, Cáceres, Extremadura ; displaying a colorful cinematography by Henry Decae . Lively and jolly musical score with rousing leitmotif by Gerard Calvi .The motion picture was well-mounted and fast paced by Christian Jacque, an expert on adventures and historic genre as proved in ¨Fanfan¨, ¨Lady Hamilton¨ , ¨Madame Sans Gene¨ , ¨Madame Du Barry¨ , ¨Lucrece Borgia¨, among others . Ratinh : 6,5 . Worthwhile watching .

A lesser-known literary creation of Alexandre Dumas Snr. was this Zorro-type masked avenger at the time of the French Revolution who, unlike the contemporaneous The Scarlet Pimpernel, was on the side of the Revolutionaries despite being truly an aristocrat himself! I've never read the source novel myself but, in any case, I'm familiar with the character via a fondly-remembered Japanese animated series that I used to watch on Italian TV as a kid (where the titular hero was actually a girl!). Having said that, it seems that much of the narrative has also been changed for this handsomely-mounted, energetic but disappointingly bland cinematic adaptation.Alain Delon – who, ironically, would go on to portray Zorro himself in an equally medium-grade Italian production in 1975 – plays a dual role here as the jaded aristocrat who dons the black costume and as his naïve, younger brother who is forced to keep up the ruse when the latter is facially scarred during a swordfight with his nemesis (Adolfo Marsillach). No self-respecting swashbuckling hero goes by without a gushing female pining for him and, appropriately enough, we get two here in Virna Lisi and Dawn Addams – one for each Delon persona! The fomer ditches her own imminent marriage when she meets cute with the shier Delon and the latter gets it on with the older Delon practically in front of her ageing aristocrat husband, Akim Tamiroff.

French version of the Zorro legend set during the period just prior to the French Revolution plays like Zorro the Gay Blade at times. Its an amusing romp with Alain Delon in the heroic lead (Delon would take up the mantle of Zorro a decade later and sleep walk his way through the role). Its the typical stuff with the "bandit" hailed as hero while the ruling class hates his guts. Filled with funny remarks and great action this is a film to search out, or would be if there were any decent copies floating around. The only way it seems to see this is on really bad low budget videotapes, which is a shame since its better than most swashbuckling romps that have appeared over the years.

It is always a tad unfair to judge movies in a dubbed version especially ,as is the case here,when the dubbing is perfunctory and careless.Actors voices are among the key elements of their personality and replacing them with an anonymous voiceover artist is tantamount to a form of castration.,not to mention the loss of credibility arising from poor lip synchronization.The movie needs all the help it can get anyway being a pretty feeble affair.The Black Tulip is a Zorro like figure,with a penchant for black garb and mask who sides with the peasantry in the French Revolution by holding up aristocrats and disbursing the proceeds to the downtrodden-a reverse Scarlet Pimpernel,whose sentiments,rightly ,were pro establishment.When scarred on his face by the Police Lieutenant General he substitutes his identical twin,an idealist,who takes to the role with some relishCue romantic entanglements,some woeful sword fights and a plethora of bad dubbing until we get to the finale where heroism and self sacrifice rule the day Delon is dull and lacks the balletic grace that marks out the best screen swordsmenMinor in every way