The Crusades (1935) is full of convoluted history, campy dialogue and massive, glamorous spectacle - in other words, it's a typical and totally entertaining Cecil B. DeMille production. In fact, despite the loud criticism he received for his take on history, DeMille thought The Crusades one of his best movies. The director chose to tell the story of the Third Crusade, beginning his movie in the year 1187, but he pieced together characters and events from all the Crusades (which took place over two centuries), deeming the historical inaccuracies relatively unimportant. "Telescoping history" is how he described it.

"Audiences are not interested in dates," DeMille wrote in his memoirs, "they are interested in events and their meaning. We chose the year 1187 as the focal point for our story, but did not hesitate to bring in elements from other Crusades before or after that exact time...The history conveyed to the audience by The Crusades was simply that there was a time when Christian men, kings, knights, and commoners, with motives ranging from the purest faith to the blackest treachery and greed, left their homes by the thousands and sought to wrest the Holy Land from its Moslem possessors, who were not, as the propaganda at the time would have it, infidel dogs, but highly civilized and chivalrous foemen...One of my objectives [was] to bring out that the Saracens were a cultivated people, and their great leader, Saladin, as perfect and gentle a knight as any in Christiandom."

And so DeMille bought Harold Lamb's book The Crusade: Iron Men and Saints and used it as a starting point to fashion a tale of King Richard the Lion-Hearted leading his crusaders to Jerusalem to save the city from Saladin. Richard finances his knights by agreeing to marry the Princess Berengaria, but as he is too busy and uninterested to attend his own wedding, the princess marries his sword in an elaborate ceremony. When Richard finally sees Berengaria, he begs her forgiveness - understandably, for Berengaria is played by Loretta Young, one of Hollywood's all-time loveliest actresses. The princess is later captured by Saladin, causing Richard's crusade to take on a personal slant in addition to the religious one. (In casting Berengaria, DeMille said "she must act like Helen Hayes, have the vivacity of Miriam Hopkins, the wistfulness of Helen Mack, and the charm of Marion Davies. As for looks, she must be a combination of all four." After trying unsuccessfully to borrow Merle Oberon from Fox, he went with Young.)

Portraying the hero Richard as a thuggish brute and the villain Saladin as sympathetic adds some interesting dimension to the film, making it something other than just a questionable history lesson. But helping DeMille get away with all this even more was his gift for spectacle. Critics certainly realized this; they regarded The Crusades as a guilty pleasure. Time said, "As a picture it is historically worthless, didactically treacherous, artistically absurd. None of these defects impairs its entertainment value." And The New York Times called it "rich in the kind of excitement that pulls an audience irresistibly to the edge of its seat."

Factual history aside, DeMille went to great lengths to achieve accuracy in his costumes, props, and sets. (The huge Windsor Castle set was especially authentic.) But it was his unparalleled handling of crowd scenes and grand battles which really wowed audiences. The climactic Battle of Acre was the Lord of the Rings epic set-piece of its day. It is still impressive. Unfortunately, all of this made the film so expensive that it lost $700,000 its first time around in theaters - a lot of money in those days. (Eventually, the picture turned a profit via re-releases.)

During the shoot, master comedy director Ernst Lubitsch - then also head of production at Paramount - was a frequent and fascinated set visitor. One day DeMille asked him, "I like Trouble in Paradise [1932] more than I can say. It's like a present from Cartier with the tissue paper just removed. What on earth interests you in my poor efforts?" "I'm hypnotized," replied Lubitsch. "There isn't a cocktail shaker or a tuxedo in sight!"

Some notable casting: DeMille's daughter Katherine plays Alice, Princess of France, and a very young Ann Sheridan plays a Christian girl sold at a slave auction in the opening scenes.

Producer/Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenplay: Harold Lamb, Dudley Nichols, Waldemar Young
Cinematography: Victor Milner
Film Editing: Anne Bauchens
Music: Rudolph G. Kopp
Cast: Loretta Young (Berengaria), Henry Wilcoxon (Richard the Lionheart), Ian Keith (Saladin), C. Aubrey Smith (The Hermit), Katherine DeMille (Alice of France), Joseph Schildkraut (Conrad of Montferrat).
BW-123m.

by Jeremy Arnold