Many classic films on VHS tape are being lost due to deterioration of the tapes, even if they are considered to be “new” tapes. I had to return a tape to a seller because of this issue. After viewing the returned tape, the seller refunded my purchase price, but that did not assuage our disappointment at not being able to retain the film.

Fire and smoke from burning castles! The clashing steel of crossed swords! Hunting horns summoning forest rebels! A nasty, snaky, scheming John on the throne who is well worth hissing at every evil smirk upon his ratty face!

But where is the DVD version for this beautifully colored and stylish film? {And where, for that matter, is the DVD version of “Quo Vadis?”)

But it is the witty, and sometimes heart-rending dialogue (and the looks on the characters’ faces as they

say the sad lines) that is the real glory of this film…not the beautiful, stirring pageantry and jousting action. The most moving scenes are almost too painful to watch…the scene between Rebecca and her father Isaac, as he tries to explain to her aching, yearning heart why she cannot care for Ivanhoe…the scene in which Rebecca is tending to Ivanhoe’s near-death wounds in his tent after the joust, and Ivanhoe’s would-be future wife, Rowena the Saxon Princess, comes to see about him…by watching and listening closely, Rowena deduces that Rebecca loves Ivanhoe, too…Rebecca “has to” say the expected things to demur from the love she really feels…the look of incredible idolatry and fierce loyalty on the face of Wamba, the “simple” fool, who also loves Ivanhoe…

For me, the film gets a little slow and tedious in the long interplay at the castle where Ivanhoe is eventually tricked into surrendering himself in order to try to gain the freedom of his friends (the critic above apparently has not seen this film in some time, if at all…for the characters played by George Sanders and the other actor are NOT Ivanhoe’s friends–they are his sworn Norman foes!)…

I think rightly one is a little disgusted with King Richard when he finally comes riding in pomp and “triumph” onto the jousting field and looks like he is the big hero, when in fact he has been the doofus reason for all the misery and heartache by his silly out-of-the-country crusade glory-hunting and subsequent imprisonment for ransom in Austria… isn’t that the way?…Ivanhoe and Locksley do all the work of fighting John and his Norman goons, and Richard comes galloping…ta-lot, ta-lot, ta-lot… onto the scene, acting as if he is bringing freedom and good government back to England…

But love gets the real trouncing in this film…for Rebecca loves Ivanhoe with all her heart, and yet cannot have him according to the “rules” of the religious, social, and political system…Gilbert loves Rebecca, and cannot have her according to the rules of plot concerning villain knights in Romantic historical fiction… Wamba loves Ivanhoe, and cannot have him because he is a serf (whom Ivanhoe releases from his bondage) and a “fool,” and a male…and it is really debatable whether Rowena truly loves Ivanhoe (more than Rebecca), even though they did a blood-betrothal thing when they were kids…she is playing her part as Saxon princess waiting faithfully for the return of the heroic Ivanhoe… oh, well, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt… but does Ivanhoe truly love her…rather than loving Rebecca? … so much thwarted love…and so many thwarting religious/social/political conventions and rules of the feudal and class systems that screw up people’s lives…isn’t it wonderful that we have so much more freedom in our lives, today?…and are not the victims of religious and social and legal conventions that thwart our love and our lives? SO MUCH has changed since the dreary, life-and-spirit killing Middle Ages!!