#The mask of zorro movie

McCulley's Zorro wore a wide sombrero, in contrast to Fairbanks' small flat-brimmed hat. Fairbanks and the production team changed the title from McCulley's original, The Curse of Capistrano, to The Mark of Zorro, and introduced many of the elements that were to become part and parcel of the Zorro persona - the Z-shaped swordstrokes, Zorro's habit of slicing candles and leaving them burning, Zorro disguising himself in a priest's outfit, and so on.

#The mask of zorro movie

McCulley's book drew the attention of Douglas Fairbanks Sr, who was the driving force behind the movie version which came out in 1920. He defends a family in danger from the corrupt Spanish governor, gets the girl against some stiff competition (of course) and, in the book's final pages, reveals his true identity to the astonishment of all. Zorro, by contrast, is only too happy to draw his sword and call on the services of Tornado, his ultra-intelligent horse. He aids the helpless and avenges the oppressed. His father tells him at one point: 'Get life into you! I would you had half the courage and spirit this SeГ±or Zorro, this highwayman, has! He has principles and he fights for them. In his version, Zorro - the Spanish word for fox - is the alter ego of the nobleman Don Diego Vega, whose demeanour is so cold and uninspiring that he cannot successfully woo the lovely Senorita Lolita or begin to satisfy the ambitions of his father. And he also shifted locales from northern California to the pueblo of Los Angeles. McCulley moved the action back from the Gold Rush to the time of Mexican independence from Spain, in 1821.

McCulley, though, had other sources to draw on, most notably The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy's fantasy of a foppish aristocrat with a double life, which had first appeared in 1905. But, hey, when we have plenty of swordplay and the spectacle of Zeta-Jones in skimpy lace underwear to contemplate, who's complaining?Д®lements of all this were cleverly woven into the 1998 Zorro movie. In the latest movie, Zorro and California's Mexican population are seen cheering the advent of Californian statehood in 1850, even though the arrangement worked entirely to the Anglo population's advantage and cut them out of the political power structure for 150 years. Such hasty rearrangement of the historical furniture remains a feature of the Zorro phenomenon even today. Since his creation 86 years ago, Zorro has always been a bit of a bad-faith hero - a Mexican Robin Hood originally offered up for the entertainment of white Californians who were busy repressing the very Mexicans Zorro defended. If the fantasy is imbued with a certain amount of Hollywood-style bad faith, that in itself may be no less telling a sign of the times. In an age of killer hurricanes and nuclear proliferation and suicide bombings and endless conflict in Iraq, what could be more reassuring than a quietly dignified, seemingly passive nobleman who in fact leads a double life, dons a hero's mask to defend the people whenever necessary and makes a habit of triumphing over his enemies by gouging his trademark Z into their quivering flesh? In the United States - and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the western world - the political class is regarded as unusually corrupted and incompetent, and unequal to the daunting challenges imposed by our distinctly dangerous times.

It is also tempting to think, though, that Zorro might just be a hero whose time has come, or come back.