If you liked Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, then withoutquestion, you should see Adventures of Don Juan. This is another swashbuckling adventure fantasy film that he stars in. This picture is from 1948 and is another Technicolor classic starring the iconic actor Errol Flynn. This film is directed by Vincent Sherman and stars screen legend Viveca Lindfors, along with plenty of veteran actors including Robert Douglas, Alan Hale (he was also in The Adventures of Robin Hood), Raymond Burr, and Mary Stuart.
Errol Flynn (Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk) stars as Don Juan, who has the reputation (and rightly so!) of being a womanizer, a love them and leave them type who wants to repair his tarnished image. He is introduced to and later takes a job working for Queen Margaret (screen legend Viveca Lindfors, Dark City, Creepshow, Exorcist III) as a fencing instructor. The queen is stuck in a loveless marriage with the weak King Philip III (Romney Brent, The Virgin Queen, The Screaming Mimi), but despite Don Juan’s come-ons, she resists him. Don Juan learns of a sinister plot by the King’s minister, Duke de Lorca (Robert Douglas, Ivanhoe, The Prisoner of Zenda) and he along with court jester Sebastian (Jerry Austin) and his sidekick Leporello(Alan Hale, Santa Fe Trail, They Drive by Night, Whiplash), they plot to stop the Duke’s plans.
Adventures of Don Juan is another excellent, exciting swashbuckling film starring Flynn in familiar territory, with plenty of action, sword fighting to go with a strong story and fluid direction. The cast as one would expect hands in superior, professional performances. Elwood Bredell was the man responsible for the wonderful cinematography. The legendary Max Steiner (King Kong, Casablanca) delivers lively, rousing musical scores in the film as well.
Adventures of Don Juan receives a Blu-ray from Warner Archive. Given a new 4K scan from the original Technicolor negatives, the movie simply looks fantastic with a clean image with rich textures. Colors look bold, especially reds, greens, and blues. The image has been cleaned up to the point where there is no dirt, no debris to be found. Grain is present giving the movie a film-like appearance. Blacks look strong and shadow details look superb. The image is quite a revelation and nothing short of what Warner Archive usually delivers on in terms of a nearly perfect image!
The DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio track for the film sounds fine, however there are some short scenes that did sound a bit distorted causing the dialogue to be somewhat hard to follow. It isn’t too distracting, thankfully and is probably nothing more than an age-old anomality but you can probably notice the distortions if you check for it while watching. Outside of that, the audio, music, and background sounds, such as sword fighting are clear and balanced. Warner has included English (SDH) subtitles for this release.
On their Blu-ray, Warner includes extras from their DVD release, which includes an audio commentary with director Vincent Sherman and film historian Rudy Behlmer.
Warner Night at the Movies, which consists of four clips that contain a series of short period-specific featurettes and other vintage pieces, plus a short Newsreel featurette that lasts for a minute.
Also included is the Joe McDoakes Short: So You Want to Be On the Radio, the Warner Bros. Short: Calgary Stampede, which is shot in Technicolor and a Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare Splitter. A theatrical trailer
Is also part of the supplemental package.
Because of the fantastic image quality, overall satisfactory sounding and the ported over extras, Adventures of Don Juan is easily highly recommended! I think fans of this film will be astonished by how good the video looks on this Blu-ray!
Adventures of Don Juan
Director- Vincent Sherman
Cast- Errol Flynn, Viveca Lindfors, Alan Hale
Country of Origin- USA
Distributor – Warner Archive/ Warner Brothers
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date –8/18/2022