Customer Reviews
High adventure in glorious Technicolor! - By: Trevor Willsmer, 26 Oct 2006 
Ivanhoe is easily the most glorious of MGM's British swashbucklers made with blocked funds designed to beat a short-lived embargo on US films being shown in the UK. It's also one of many roles intended for Stewart Granger that instead ended up revitalizing Robert Taylor's career by default. He's not exactly the perfect choice for the part, but he does well enough even if he is outshone by George Sanders de Bois Guilbert, hopelessly in unrequited love with nice Jewish girl Elizabeth Taylor who is herself hopelessly in unrequited love with Ivanhoe. Indeed, Sanders manages to make him both ruthless & still worthy of pity. That he does is as much down to the quality of ?neas MacKenzie's adaptation & Noel Langley & Marguerite Roberts' fine script, which strips away Scott's often inaccessible wordiness to find the human story at its heart, adding an intelligent portrait of anti-Semitism along the way.
Richard Thorpe's vivid direction & Freddie Young's gorgeous Technicolor photography ensure the film always looks a treat, while Miklos Rozsa's score is one of his very best, equallly at home with both the swashbuckling spectacle & the tragic love story. Although Emlyn Williams `Squire' Wamba is a pain, most of the supporting cast - Joan Fontaine, Felix Aylmer, Finlay Currie, Robert Douglas, Guy Rolfe - acquit themselves well. Grand entertainment.
WHV's NTSC DVD transfer is for the most part excellent, though the ambush of Cedric's party seems a little faded & lacking in depth. Sadly the nly film-related extra is a teaser trailer (there was a much better 4-minute trailer for the film), but at least they've made an effort to pad it out with Tom & Jerry's Oscar winning cartoon The Two Mouseleteers & trailers for Scaramouche, Knights of the Round Table & The Aviator.
