Le résumé:
Au 11émé siécle, pour remercier de sa bravoure le Chevalier Chrysagon, le Duc de Gand lui offre une terre inhospitaliére, souvent visité par les Frisons en héritage.
Après une bataille contre ces derniers, le nouveau seigneur s'installe parmis ses nouveaux sujets, et tombe fou amoureux d'une jeune vierge promise à un villageois. Il fait alors valoir le "droit de cuissage", droit auquel la future mariée doit se soumettre. Son fiancée ne l'entend pas de cette maniére...
Amateurs de combats violents, de machines infernales(béliers, catapultes, tour d'assaut,...), de tactiques guerriéres médiévales, ce film est fait pour vous.
Mais c'est avant tout une histoire d'amour impossible, entre le Seigneur et une jeune villageoise promise à un autre, le film n'est donc pas un non-stop action de 2 heures, mais il respire pendant une bonne heure avant de repartir dans son lot d'aventures.
Le film est tiré d'une piéce de théatre ce qui explique le lieu unique(pratiquement) de ce donjon, et de l'intrigue qui s'y déroule.
La réalisation est inspiré, et parfois contemplative devant Bors(Richard Boone) notamment.
L'héroine est jouée par la très belle Rosemary Forsyth(Shenandoah).
Une excellente occasion de découvrir ce film, avant de vous replonger dans "La Chair et le Sang" de Verhoeven que je lui préfére, mais alors vraiment d'un cheveu.
Pour le DVD:
Il s'agit d'un édition économique Good Times(filiale d'Universal), qui propose le film en format respecté 2.35, mais non compatible 16/9. Il y a la présence de sous-titres français
.J'ai vraiment eu très peur car le début du film est très granuleux, petit défaut de toutes les prises de vus en extérieurs. Les scénes d'intérieurs réalisées en studio sont par contre superbe, et les couleurs pimpantes, sans bavées pour autant. Quelques points blancs de ci de là, mais c'est tout à fait convenable.
Il existe même des figurines!!!
Une petite critique en anglais:
http://www.selu.edu/kslu/warlord.html
The War Lord (1965)
The War Lord is probably the most unsympathetic role Charlton Heston played during the fifteen or so years that he was at the top of his form in large scale epic dramas, which included Ben Hur, The Agony and the Ecstasy and El Cid. The film is shot by master cinematographer Russell Metty and has wonderful art direction and set design (by the gifted Henry Bumstead, among others. It is written in fake and sometimes clever eftsoons style (by fantasy writer John Collier, among others. And it is directed with panache by Franklin Schaffner. The film has much to recommend it, but has attracted little attention over the years.
Heston plays a war lord who has apparently been given a town to compensate for him for his loyalty to the Duke. When Heston arrives with his men, including his wicked brother (Guy Stockwell, not to be confused with his better known brother Dean) and his loyal retainer Richard Boone, they find the town under siege by Cecil B. De Mille stalwart Henry Wilcoxon. Heston drives the Fresian invaders away, but soon begins to lust after a beautiful village virgin, fetchingly portrayed by Rosemary Forsyth. Unfortunately, she is about to marry a local lad played by a young James Farrentino
Heston decides to claim first night wedding privileges, which he is allowed to do under the old Druid religion still practiced by the locals. When he decides not to relinquish the girl to her new husband the next morning, all hell breaks loose. Every single decision he makes during the course of the two hour film is wrong., and every disaster leads to a greater one.
Schaffner was a master of wide screen composition and can be seen here warming up here for Patton, his most famous film, and for Planet of the Apes, perhaps his most popular. Heston thought the studio slighted character and sold the film out for spectacle, but if this is true the money was well spent. It is hard to see how the characters could have had much depth anyway.
When the film appeared in 1965, the studios were in revolt against the code, which was soon to be replaced by today's rating system. and the film today would qualify for a PG13 rating. The darkness of the film, its explicitness (for the time), and its odious central figure doomed the film to financial failure. But now, after nearly forty years, The War Lord and Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee, which appeared in the same year, can be seen as fascinating portraits of heroic figures tainted by enormous flaws in character.
Une autre critique:
http://www.unf.edu/classes/medieval/fil ... rlord.html
Il doit rester pas mal d'employés d'Ex-Polygram chez eux, et ceux-là, c'étaient vraiment des brêles !
