More Zenda prisoners

About a year and a half ago, I did a post on the 1937 movie version of the 1890s novel The Prisoner of Zenda. I knew that there was another movie version, made in color in the early 1950s, but I hadn't seen that one before. So the last time TCM ran it, I recorded it. The 1952 vesion of The Prisoner of Zenda is coming up on TCM again tomorrow, October 29, at 4:15 PM.

Needless to say, the plot of the two movies is pretty much the same, especially so since to save money, TCM largely reused the 1937 screenplay, never mind both movies are adapting the same source material. Rudolf Rassendyll (Stewart Granger) is an Englishman who's decided to go on a fishing vacation to the tiny Balkan monarchy of Ruritania. As he steps off the train in Ruritania, everybody seems shocked, and frankly as I watched this version of the movie it hit me: nobody bothers to tell him why they react the way they do when they see him. The reason, of course, is that Rudolf bears a striking resemblance, except for his moustache, to the crown prince who is soon to be crowned King Rudolf V (also played by Granger, which explains why they look alike).

Rassendyll is found by Col. Zapt (Louis Calhern) and Capt. von Tarlenheim, who explain the similarity to him (apparently, the two are distant cousins), and invite Rassendyll to meet his doppelgänger. They have dinner together and a bunch of wine, the crown prince known to be a heavy drinker. What they didn't know is that there's one last bottle of wine, which the English Rudolf doesn't drink, that was drugged by the prince's evil brother Michael (Robert Douglas). The idea was that with Rudolf incapacitated, Michael could take over as Regent, with Rupert (James Mason) being the power behind the throne.

But Zapt and company have an English lookalike, and are able to persuade him to take his cousin's place at the coronation. Of course, the English Rudolf doesn't know anything about Ruritanian politics, and one would think he doesn't know the language. But none of that is a barrier since this is a movie. One other problem is that in one of those royal marriages of convenience, the crown prince was supposed to marry a cousin, Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr). Flavia didn't particularly care for the crown prince, but when she meets the Englishman playing the part of the crown prince, she likes this guy.

Now, the plan was for English Rudolf to go through the coronation and then give the crown and everything else to the crown prince, with nobody knowing the difference. Except that while the ceremony is going on, Michael and Rupert have the actual crown prince kidnapped. English Rudolf has to keep up the charade.

Since the screenplays are largely the same, there's not much to compare between the two movies. And of course, I haven't watched the 1937 version since blogging about it to compare the two movies. I will say, however, that Technicolor is something that works for a movie like this, even more so than modern-day color which is way too often based on a color scheme of teals and oranges for no good reason. There's not much grounding in reality in The Prisoner of Zenda, and the bright three-strip Technicolor is great for that. Stewart Granger is also an actor well-suited to period pieces like this, even if the other actors are better in other genres. Still, they all give it a professional go, and make this version of The Prisoner of Zenda a rousing watch.