Overview

Cinema of Swords is a combination history, handbook, and love letter to nearly four hundred movies and television shows featuring swashbucklers: knights, pirates, samurai, Vikings, gladiators, outlaw heroes like Zorro and Robin Hood, and anyone else who lives by the blade and deals with their problems at the point of a sword. As much as swordplay seems a mainstay of current pop culture—whether Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars—swashbuckling was if anything even more ubiquitous through Hollywood’s classic period, from its foundations in the Silent Era up through the efflorescence of fantasy films in the ‘80s. With a huge cinematic backlist of classics now available online and on-demand, Cinema of Swords traces the roots and branches of this unruly genre, highlighting the classics of the form and helping fans discover new gems they never knew existed. With wry summaries and criticism from swordplay expert Lawrence Ellsworth, this comprehensive guidebook is perfect as a reference work or as a dazzling Hollywood history to be read end-to-end.

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9781493065622

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Cinema of Swords is a trustworthy and indispensable reference guide that's also a wildly entertaining collection of essays, joyfully written by an author of remarkable wisdom, wit, and taste. But, be warned: these pages are filled with rabbit holes, and when you find yourself flipping through them to check on a single name or the title of a film, you might stumble in to a wonderland of adventures and swashbuckling cinematic gems. Side effects may include heroics, tragedy, torture, revenge, animated skeletal swordsmen, breathless chases, and daring escapes. Overuse may lead to double- or even triple-feature movie nights with friends. I recommend hot, buttered popcorn and Robin Hood Daffy as the opening cartoon short. Enjoy!"" --Wynne McLaughlin, narrative game designer, screenwriter, and novelist ""Cinema of Swords is an exhaustive, informative, thoroughly invigorating retrospective on motion pictures that contain swordfights. Author Ellsworth has brought humor and knowledge to the proceedings, and he knows his stuff. As a former college film history instructor myself, I was pleased to see some of my favorites included--and how could they not be? This book has it all!"" --Raymond Benson, author and film historian ""Cinema of Swords is the adventure lover's guide to the streaming era. More than just an invaluable reference book, it's a browser's delight, with insightful, informative, and frequently laugh-out-loud entries on hundreds of swashbucklers, from Captain Blood to The Golden Voyage of Sinbad to Hawk the Slayer. It's a pleasure to read, and the one truly indispensable movie book of the last five years. Don't miss it."" --John O'Neil, editor, BlackGate.com ""Cinema of Swords is a trustworthy and indispensable reference guide that's also a wildly entertaining collection of essays, joyfully written by an author of remarkable wisdom, wit, and taste. But, be warned: these pages are filled with rabbit holes, and when you find yourself flipping through them to check on a single name or the title of a film, you might stumble in to a wonderland of adventures and swashbuckling cinematic gems. Side effects may include heroics, tragedy, torture, revenge, animated skeletal swordsmen, breathless chases, and daring escapes. Overuse may lead to double- or even triple-feature movie nights with friends. I recommend hot, buttered popcorn and Robin Hood Daffy as the opening cartoon short. Enjoy!"" --Wynne McLaughlin, narrative game designer, screenwriter, and novelist ""Cinema of Swords is an exhaustive, informative, thoroughly invigorating retrospective on motion pictures that contain swordfights. Author Ellsworth has brought humor and knowledge to the proceedings, and he knows his stuff. As a former college film history instructor myself, I was pleased to see some of my favorites included--and how could they not be? This bookhas it all!"" --Raymond Benson, author and film historian ""Cinema of Swords is the adventure lover's guide to the streaming era. More than just an invaluable reference book, it's a browser's delight, with insightful, informative, and frequently laugh-out-loud entries on hundreds of swashbucklers, from Captain Blood to The Golden Voyage of Sinbad to Hawk the Slayer. It's a pleasure to read, and the one truly indispensable movie book of the last five years. Don't miss it."" --John O'Neil, editor, BlackGate.com"

Author Information

Lawrence Ellsworth is a writer, editor, and translator of historical fiction and an acknowledged expert on the history of swashbuckling in literature and film. In addition to his new translations of Alexandre Dumas’s Musketeers cycle—which has brought contemporary English editions of these classics into print for the first time in over a century—he is the author of The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure and historical adventure pieces for The Huffington Post and Literary Hub.

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