The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)

Beautiful, moving film.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Crikey, what a film! You can just imagine the planning meetings; "yeah, we'll have Gary Cooper as Marco Polo, there'll be adventure, beautiful girls, romance, action, all set in the mystic east, it's gonna be GREAT...".Except it wasn't. The pacing is uneven, the film lacks realism, lacks historical accuracy, Cooper is miscast, and even as entertainment the film is somewhat lacking. All this applies by the standards of the time, not just in retrospect: When the film was released, after a troubled production, the audience voted with their feet and stayed away; the film lost a fortune. Often films that don't do well at the time are viewed more kindly in hindsight, but not this one; it is very patchy indeed.Gary Cooper does his best but you can see his heart is not in it; if he too had been made up to look 'oriental' then it could have been an epic miscast on a par with John Wayne in 'the Conqueror' two decades later. As it is, it isn't quite as bad as that. Watching this film was interesting for me in other ways. One thing that struck me was that the shot of our hero narrowly avoiding plunging into a chasm (screen left) was a dead ringer for a shot in the final Indiana Jones film; both appear to have been done using a matte of the chasm and if anything, the 1938 matte looks more realistic. So much for progress!Another thing that struck me was that the 1980 film 'Flash Gordon' contains many of the plot elements seen here, albeit rearranged somewhat. One can only suppose that there was some, uh, 'inspiration' from this film. However whilst in Flash Gordon they went for 'camp' in an absolutely shameless fashion, and reviewers here have tarred this film with the camp brush too, I don't think it was ever meant that way. It might perhaps have been a better film if they had.For me, the one standout in this film is Basil Rathbone; he really did make an excellent bad guy! Another film around this time also saw him playing a 'bad Guy', literally; Guy of Gisborne, in Robin Hood, a well-remembered role. Arguably he only narrowly avoided being eternally typecast as a bad guy by being eternally typecast as Sherlock Holmes instead. It could have been worse I suppose; although Rathbone fought against this Holmes association for many years he eventually came to embrace it.There are other small roles of interest in this film such as Lana Turner's, but for the most part this film is today little more than a slightly puzzling period piece. It isn't actually awful to watch, but this 'rock' burned nearly everyone involved.

Gary Cooper goes from Italy to China in a manner that only old Hollywood could manage with make believe sets and white actors pretending to be Asian. The plot has Coper being sent from Venice to China by his father in order to open up lucrative trade with the far Eastern country. In true Hollywood style its a radical rewrite of what actually happened, but then gain Polo's story was a Puff piece in its own right so I'm guessing turn about is fair play. Cooper, a good actor in the right part, is completely out of place as Polo. He looks more like a western star in dress up then a Venetian merchant.The rest of cast doesn't fair much better, but at least there is the joy of knowing that everyone is in the same boat. Perhaps this all would have worked better if there had been something approaching real sets and not so much rear screen projection. An amusing movie that walks the fine line between being fun on its own terms and camp, the film is enjoyable for what it is, a (wrongheaded) Hollywood epic of the old school. Taken for what it is you'll have a good time. Taken on anything other than its own terms you're in for a laugh fest. Worth seeing at least once.

If you want good fortune, avoid this one, cookie!! The big disappointment is that it is in b/w. You can put up with almost anything in glorious technicolor, but not this. It is painful to watch and the corny Confucius line is intentional to give a taste of that. From the shame of the lack of genuinely oriental actors (although this can be forgiven to some extent given the range of the conquests of the Khans. For example, the Princess, obviously Swedish/German with light eyes) could have been the conquest of Khan and a foreign woman of a farflung edge of the empire) to the failed attempts at humor, this one is a loser. But the acting is so horrible you really don't want to forgive them anything. Especially the so-called humor like shouting "Marco! Polo!" in the beginning of the film. Laugh riot that. Not.The one redeeming factor of the film is Gary Cooper. If you are a die-hard Gary Cooper fan you will probably watch him in anything so you may be forgiven for watching this.But if you're not a GC addict you should avoid this at all costs or risk having your brain fried worse than fireworks in your ears.

You either get it or you don't. Like most studio films, this movie was intended to make money by providing one thing - entertainment. Not a history lesson, not social commentary. Entertainment. Like the better realized but equally fake-medieval "Adventures of Robin Hood," released the same year (1938), "The Adventures of Marco Polo" (note the similar title) provides plenty of entertainment in the comedy-adventure genre that eventually led to "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Evaluating either "Raiders" or "Marco Polo" on its historical accuracy misses the point. It's like asking how Marco is able to speak what must be flawless Mandarin, plus the language of Alan Hale's presumably Turkic people. If you gotta ask, the movie just isn't your style.Cooper looks a little less comfortable in this role than in some others, but he's adequately wry and intrepid, never taking the role of Marco too seriously. The rarely-seen Sigrid Gurie, whose face reminds one of Garbo, even through the Asian makeup, is beautiful and ethereal as the daughter of Kublai, played with Midwestern folksiness by the affable George Barbier. (Remember, it's not supposed to be real.) As Kublai's evil vizier, Basil Rathbone emanates the same elegant menace as he did in the role of Sir Guy in "Robin Hood." The ubiquitous Alan Hale, Sr., plays his usual self, and if you look carefully you'll see teenybopper Lana Turner in a small but fully credited role.Why aren't there any Chinese here in leading roles? Because first, the studio had big-name actors on contract and meant to use their box-office appeal to make a bundle. Second, despite the potentially impressive Asian-American talent pool in California no greed-driven executive would have counted on white audiences in 1938 to shell out Depression-era cash to watch Asian unknowns acting the leads in for-profit motion picture. "The Adventures of Marco Polo" is not "The Last Emperor," and it doesn't pretend to be. Nor is it a misconceived turkey like John Wayne's Mongol epic "The Conqueror" (1961). Instead it's only a great "family film" and simple adventurous fun in the pulp-magazine tradition.