Drama

Adventure

The Prince and the Pauper

International Film Productions

United Kingdom

United States of America

English

Mark Lester

Oliver Reed

Charlton Heston

David Hemmings

Ernest Borgnine

George C. Scott

Harry Andrews

Raquel Welch

Rex Harrison

Sybil Danning

Julian Orchard

Murray Melvin

Lalla Ward

Felicity Dean

Graham Stark

Preston Lockwood

Arthur Hewlett

Tommy Wright

Harry Fowler

Richard Hurndall

Dan Meaden

Tyrone Cassidy

Don Henderson

Sydney Bromley

Ruth Madoc

Dudley Sutton

Roy Evans

William Lawford

Peter O'Farrell

Anthony Sharp

Peter Cellier

Andrew Lodge

Igor de Savitch

Dervis Ward

Michael Ripper

Jacques Le Carpentier

Ernest Walter

Jack Cardiff

Richard Fleischer

Ilya Salkind

Pierre Spengler

Mark Twain

Michael Walter

Berta Domínguez D.

George MacDonald Fraser

Maurice Jarre

Maude Spector

Anthony Pratt

Maurice Fowler

John Hoesli

Jack Stephens

Judy Moorcroft

José Antonio Sánchez

Ottó Elek

Basil Keys

Helena Toth

Sándor Tóth

Olivier Assayas

Michael Green

Vilmos Kolba

Laurent Perrin

Zsuzsa Szemes

Nigel Wooll

Roy Charman

Colin Miller

Eddie Fowlie

Wally Veevers

Alec Mills

Betty Adamson

Andrés Fernández

Sally Gilpin

Alexander Salkind

Filipe Manuel Neto

**A very weak and uninteresting film, despite the constellation of great actors.**

I am not a connoisseur of Mark Twain's work, so I was curious to read some things about the original story he wrote after a trip he made to the European continent. From what I've read on the internet about the story, I believe the movie does justice to the source material, but as I didn't get the story to read it, I want to make it clear that I could be wrong.

Summing up in a few words the whole plot, what we have is a story in which a poor teenager, whom his father taught to steal, penetrates the palace of King Henry VIII and comes across the heir to the crown, Prince Edward. The two quickly realize that they are identical lookalikes and the prince decides to change clothes with the beggar so they both go to a masked ball. It turns out that the disguise turns out to be too good, and the real prince ends up expelled from the palace. After some misadventures, he enlists the help of a nobleman who returns to the kingdom after a long journey, making it imperative to undo the mistake before the coronation of the new king, since, in the meantime, Henry VIII dies.

The story has its appeal, but I have to confess that it sounded so far-fetched and hard to believe that I couldn't really like it. Forgive me, Twain fans. In addition, I was not pleased with the work of the director, Richard Fleischer. I felt he didn't give the film the most appropriate pacing and dynamics. Technically, the film is not very brilliant: I really liked the costumes, although it is not believable that all that gold and silk apparatus was routine and every day, even for the royalty of the time. And I also liked the scenarios used, which put us in the atmosphere of the time very quickly, both in the courtrooms and in the environments where the poor and the marginalized live. The soundtrack, sometimes a little raucous, works reasonably. Unfortunately, the cinematography has a lot of light and I didn't like it very much, overall.

I left the cast for the end because I felt, throughout the film, that there was a huge dissonance between the various actors, something that, associated with bad direction, can help to understand why the film was a failure. There are a lot of solid and well-known names to the public at the time, but even that didn't help to convince people to pay the ticket and see it. We have, however, good interpretations that, ironically or because of the bad conception of the script, fall into the most indigestible characters in the film. Oliver Reed is the most impressive actor and leaves us very impressed, but the character is superb and boastful. Ernest Borgnine also does a good job and is very convincing, but it's impossible to like John Canty and the actor doesn't have much to do other than being obnoxious. Rex Harrison has an interesting role and is good at what he does, but appears very little. The rest of the actors can't enjoy what they get: Charlton Heston almost erases himself, Raquel Welch has absolutely nothing to do and never behaves like a lady, Mark Lester is a weak protagonist and is unable to convince.

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The Prince and the Pauper

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Cast

Mark Lester

Oliver Reed

Charlton Heston

David Hemmings

Ernest Borgnine

George C. Scott

Harry Andrews

Raquel Welch

Rex Harrison

Sybil Danning

Box office

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