#497: The Mark of Zorro (1940)
A wealthy fop fights dons a mask and fights corruption? We’ve heard this story before…
Initial release: November 8, 1940
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Caped crusaders, swashbuckling swordsmen, flying bricks — there’s all kinds of superheroes these days, and for the most part they all tend to fall into one of a few different categories. But we often forget how old the superhero genre is, with roots as far back as the Epic of Gilgamesh. But one early prototype that has long has a connection with Batman has been Zorro, that sword-swinging, horse-riding, Z-slashing caballero of colonial California. More specifically, it’s been Rouben Mamoulian’s 1940 adaptation of the Zorro story, The Mark of Zorro.
Zorro as a character is actually not much older than Batman, first appearing in the 1919 novel The Curse of Capistrano, which was pretty quickly turned into a classic 1920 silent film also titled The Mark of Zorro. But we’re not here to talk about that seminal silent swashbuckler (starring Douglas Fairbanks in the lead role, so you know it’s good!) but rather the 1940 version, which is not so much a remake as it’s another adaptation of the earlier film. Rather than Fairbanks, we get none other than Tyrone Power, one of the most handsome men to ever grace the silver screen in the early decades of talking film. (And a native of my hometown!)
I doubt there’s many folks over 30 who aren’t at least passingly familiar with the character, but for the rest of you, it’s simple — by day, Don Diego Vega is a wealthy Spanish fop, vapid and useless. By night, however, he dons a black outfit and mask and becomes Zorro, who fights against corruption and injustice! (Stop me if this sounds familiar…) And wherever he goes, you can be sure to find evidence of his passing by looking for three slashes of his sword in a Z shape — the mark of Zorro! It’s a fantastic hook, mixing classic pulp heroism (of the type that would become especially popular in the 1930s but predates that decade by quite a bit) with swashbuckling and a dash of a very particular flavor of Western (fitting into a period that’s sometimes called “Dawn of the Wild West” — the very earliest years of a mythic time of pioneering, expansionism and rustic living.)
In the 1940 film, his primary target is Luis Quintero, the current alcade (governor) of early 19th-century Los Angeles, who got the job by pushing Diego’s father out of the position. Quintero’s oppressive taxes and abusive troops have made life in Los Angeles miserable for the common citizen, and it’s up to Zorro to put a stop to it. To that end, he harasses Quintero’s henchmen, intercepts the tax money for the church to redistribute back to the people (via the local friar who taught a young Diego his sword-fighting skills,) and terrorizes Quintero in the dead of night. But Quintero is only a corrupt figurehead; the real villain is his right-hand henchman, Captain Esteban Pasquale (played by Basil Rathbone.) Mask on or off, Zorro has a formidable foe in Pasquale, who is significantly more competent and shrewd than his boss — and yet, in the end, not a better swordsman than Zorro.
While Douglas Fairbanks is certainly impressive in his early depiction of El Zorro, Tyrone Power is beyond reproach. In a performance reminiscent of Leslie Howard in the 1934 adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Power is borderline acting for two here: in public, he is foppish and charming, but kind of an irritatingly self-absorbed dandy, who flatters the alcade and gets friendly with his wife and who nobody would ever suspect of being the scourge of the corrupt, not even his family and friends; but when he’s alone, or with someone he trusts, his back straightens, his shoulders lift, and he takes on a serious tone.
I’ve talked before about how this kind of act was a big influence on Batman, about how Bruce Wayne is a rich idiot with no day job just so nobody will suspect him of being the Caped Crusader, but in terms of comics canon this is literally true — it’s been canon for years that the movie that Bruce Wayne’s parents took him to the night they were murdered was, in fact, The Mark of Zorro. (Though they’re not always consistent about which version it is; Bill Finger, Batman’s creator, was obviously inspired by the Fairbanks version as the Power version wouldn’t come out for another year, but it seems that the 1940 version is the more common choice.) And why not? The idea of a noble masked hero who uses his privileged position to fight for the downtrodden is a popular one — certainly it’s a better PR move than sending your shitty car into space. And it’s rather removed from the likes of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who used his own secret identity and impressive skills to rescue the very people whose outrageous greed caused the French Revolution to begin with. For all the various arguments about Batman as a character, some in less good faith than others, the core of his character — a guy who wants to make sure what happened to him never happens to anyone else — is what resonates.
The Mark of Zorro is a fun film, on top of everything else. There’s an element of verbal comedy that evokes nothing so much as Mel Brooks; Tyrone Power gets a lot of great lines, but he’s working alongside the likes of Basil Rathbone and Linda Darnell (as the gloriously sassy Lolita Quintero,) he can’t have all the fun! Power’s swordfighting skills must be seen to be believed; Rathbone once described him as being able to swordfight Errol Fucking Flinn into a cocked hat. So if you’re looking for a light, breezy mid-century action swashbuckler you really could do worse than the Spanish Fox.
