The Mark of Zorro - 1940

26-year old Tyrone Power looks like he is having a lot of fun playing our two main characters, one being the wealthy, foppish, easily-frightened and easily-bored Don Diego Vega, and then in secret he is the fearsome black-clad on a black-horse avenger Zorro. Vega has just returned to California from a long educational stint in Spain (where it looks like he was mostly focused on swordsmanship in his studies) and is astounded to see how badly things have gotten in 1820 Los Angeles. The local government is utterly corrupt and cruel to the peons and anyone else who gets in the way, and the local families with a bit more social standing and position are too cowed to do anything about it.

Basil Rathbone (as Captain Esteban Pasquale) is the local military / police leader for the corrupt (and clownish) governor Don Luis Quintero (played by J. Edward Bromberg). Despite the official position, we can see that in reality Rathbone is playing a mob enforcer and it is quite satisfying to see him being sent half-crazy trying to stop the fast-moving Zorro who shows up suddenly all around the territory, spoiling the governor's crooked tax-gathering operation, and then outsmarts all the traps set to catch him. To top it off, Zorro hangs insulting placards about the town that further humiliate the arrogant Captain Esteban Pasquale.

Besides the combat, trickery, and humor in the story, there is also the side-tale of the governor's beautiful niece Lolita Quintero (played by a 16-year old Linda Darnell) who is repulsed by Vega but drawn toward the menacing Zorro. Then, as they say, things get complicated.

One of the best of the swashbucklers made in Hollywood's prime, The Mark of Zorro has intense stunt work, a long fencing sequence that is done so well I can't think of anything superior to it, and the whole thing is populated with gorgeous horses running to and fro. Though we've got a brutal story of corruption and aristocratic mendacity, it all gets cut by prodigious amounts of humor, both overt and sly.

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