A new movie about legendary Swiss hero William Tell took me back to my yesteryears and a creaky TV series of the same name.
I remember very little of it, apart from having a crush on a pretty actress called Jennifer Jayne, who played Mrs Tell, the forgettable Conrad Phillips as William and an immense actor called Willoughby Goddard, who played the evil Gessler - but I do remember the theme song.
The 'William Tell Overture' is one of the best-known pieces of music there is - with or without the Lone Ranger. It opens a rather less famous opera by Rossini, which in turn was based on a play by the famous German Friedrich Schiller, urged on by mate Goethe, no less.
That rather busy play is the basis of this movie.
Incidentally, the director is Nick Hamm, a man with a considerable theatre reputation, not least as resident director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Among the cast of his Tell are Jonathan Pryce, Sir Ben Kingsley, Rafe Spall and Danish star Claes Bang as William himself.
How, we wonder, can all this firepower have led to such a damp squib?
One point of similarity with the early TV version of the tale of Tell is a certain lack of commitment among the actors. I remember the TV cast seemed resigned to the fact they were no great competition to the hit Robin Hood show, on which it was clearly modelled.
Gerald Finley in the title role of Rossini's Guillaume Tell Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.
Likewise, for all the story of William Tell's traction in Central Europe, here in the Anglophone world, we're aware that he shot an apple from someone's head and that's about it.
Unlike Robin Hood and King Arthur, who boasted Merry Men and Knights of the Round Table respectively, we have nothing to attach to Tell, apart from an apple.
Which doesn't mean we can't find out. I mean, if the story's strong enough, not knowing what happens next is a good thing, surely?
That's a big if, unfortunately. The story certainly takes its sweet time getting there.
The evil Austrians have conquered the noble Swiss, which means rapacious Tyrolean tax-collectors regularly grab Swiss villagers by the heels and shake vigorously.
As we all know, tax-collecting inevitably leads to raping, murdering and villagers named Baumgarten taking revenge.
Among the local aristocracy, some dukes take the Swiss side, while others toady to the Austrian King - Sir Ben Kingsley with a very distracting eye-patch, possibly for disguise purposes. It's no good, Ben, we see you.
He's got a noble niece called Bertha - possibly the first action heroine of that name in all cinema.
Meanwhile, the King's sheriff - I don't think he actually is a sheriff, but you know what I mean - is a rather trimmer Gessler than I remember. He advances the plot - finally - by putting a hat on a pole, then demanding everyone bow to it.
I imagine many of you are saying,'This is all very interesting, I'm sure, but where's William Tell? I thought it was his show'."
Belatedly, in he comes, crossbow in hand, sneering at the hat and refusing to bow, for which the only punishment the law allows, apparently, is to shoot an apple from his son's head.
Of course, William Tell might have worked better in the original German or, later, sung in Italian.
All I can say is that, in English that wobbles between ye-olde, with lots of 'thees' and 'thous', and modern kids TV, it's less convincing.
I do like Bang - in part because of his name, like Rip Torn and Tuppence Middleton - but here, he tries to blast his way through the substandard material, where he should have taken a tip from Conrad Phillips.
"Just keep your head down," Conrad would have told him. "Cash the cheque and two weeks later, everyone will have forgotten you were in it."
Always good advice. I just hope Claes wasn't paid in apples.
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