Semi-classic historical tomfoolery apes Dark Ages sagas and chronicles but in fact pays far more tribute to its own haute-camp glory, pitting warring macho pretty boys Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis against each-other in bitter conflict in ignorance of their shared genetic inheritance, both being the sons of rollicking Norse overlord Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine having a very, very good time). The narrative, sporting motifs of separated siblings, identifying talismans, lost princes and divine interventions, is self-conscious in touching every base of the tall tale. Richard Fleischer brought his familiar pictorial vividness to the project and kept a tighter rein on Douglas than he did for his overripe contribution to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and he gives a tremendously effective ham performance as Einar, Ragnar’s heir and embodiment of everything superlative about the Viking race.
Curtis is Eric, the offspring of Ragnar’s rape of the Queen of Northumbria during a raid. He grows up in captivity, unaware of his lineage, but retains a naturally imbued guile and a defiant nerve which makes him the object of particular hate for Einar, especially after Eric ruins Einar’s looks (which, as Ragnar points out in one of the film’s most knowingly convenient lines, he prizes so much that he “scrapes his face like an Englishman!”). One such Englishman, Egbert (James Donald), in exile for conspiring against Aela (who else but Frank Thring?), the sadistic sleaze currently reigning at home, recognises Eric as the heir and saves him Einar’s wrath, and both Eric and Einar are soon besotted and driven to new extremes when the Vikings capture Welsh princess Morgana (an improbable, but scrumptious, Janet Leigh).
Fleischer’s fascination with subjecting his heroes to intense mortification is certainly in evidence, as both Einar and Eric suffer grotesque physical wounds – Einar losing his eye to Eric’s falcon, Eric a hand to Aela’s displeasure and delight in inflicting cruelty – that humble them, and see them matched for their final clang-and-bang duel, the climax of an action finale that exemplifies Fleischer’s vital sense of physical context, emphasising the swooning heights of the castle setting to heighten the literal battle for supremacy between the two wolf-pups. Pity about the hilarious approximation of a curtailed arm Curtis sports, though.
The story is in fact very loosely based on tales of the overthrow of old Northumbria, but converts such underpinnings into a comic-book like template, and it is this broad, straightforward quality that both holds the film back from realising its potential to have been for the Viking era what, say, El Cid is for the reconquista, or indeed what Douglas and Curtis’ reunion movie Spartacus was for the Third Servile War, but also help to make it a blithely enjoyable experience just the same. The comic-book quality is indeed signalled and justified by an opening that evokes the distant past through crude, flat faux-Bayeux illustrations, with Orson Welles providing plummy pseudo-documentary commentary. It is however certain that the screenplay lacks depth and originality.
The Vikings was a product of an era in which historical cinema was beginning to take a greater pride in authenticity and tactile realism, and Fleischer, who had proven himself greatly talented in evoking a concrete milieu in his early noir films, brings something of that quality to this project, aided by Jack Cardiff’s stunningly clear and colourful vistas. The museum diorama recreations of Viking village life and thankful avoidance of horn-bedecked helmets thoroughly bears this out, but of course infused with effervescent Hollywood hype, especially in the fratboy fantasy of Viking nightlife, offering giant barrels of beer and axe-tossing contests with women as the targets, that speak much of the secret fantasies of 1958 whatever the relevance of such visions to historical milieu.
Whilst the story recognises the totemistic import of much mythology, through the device of the pommel stone from the king’s sword that is Eric’s proof of lineage, the film more dynamically employs such devices in the way the aforementioned axe-throwing scene presages a vital Viking battle tactic. The screwball silliness of Eric ripping open Morgana’s bodice so that she can row faster seems to come from a different movie, proto-Mel Brooks in its assault on the traditional decorousness of the swashbuckler, and yet it confirms the film’s tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. This gives way to an amusing inversion of the familiar piety that offset the sexploitation of so many ‘50s epics, when Eric and Morgana negotiate their way through pre-coital qualms, Morgana’s protests that there is no gap so great as that between a Christian and a pagan, and his finally convincing riposte that if their souls are content in their creeds then their flesh should be happy to be flesh.
However, the film’s most enthusiastic sensual images are homoerotic, with Douglas’ traditional masculinity of biceps and triceps pitted against Curtis’ fawnish legs, constantly displayed in the cheekiest fleecy short shorts this side of Can’t Stop the Music. That’s a stand-out example of the willingness of filmmakers, and Curtis himself, to exploit his sex appeal in a fashion usually reserved for young actresses. But the athleticism of the actors is not in question. Douglas ’ delight in his own brazen physicality and strength is nearly as apparent as his character’s, and Curtis’ performance possesses a keen, ironic quality he rarely mustered. There’s also a delightful performance by character actress
Eileen Way
as Kitala, the Viking’s freaky oracle, whose incarnation of cabalistic spirit is the closest the film comes to invoking the darker vein of Scandinavian myth so crucially captured by Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.
