It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

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.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Errol Flynn is Don Juan and he leads you through the story. Something to do with kings and queens and Spain and England. It doesn't matter.It's about swordplay and romance and Flynn is a master at demonstrating this with his likeable humour.The film doesn't have any significance outside of the time you spend watching it but Flynn entertains you for the duration.

Very good color filming, great costuming, a terrific music score are some plus factors for this swashbuckling movie. The highlight (pretty much the only one) is a magnificent sword fight- I can recommend the movie based on this highlight alone, as well all the sword work generally. The film is competently but not spectacularly directed by Vincent Sherman. The characters in this film are fairly routine, the script is average, and except for the climactic sword fight the action mostly consists of characters running around briskly.The fictional tale of 16th Century Spain is unremarkable, but the acting is good. Viveca Lindfors is a beautiful leading lady portraying the Queen of Spain, but is mostly required to react, breathlessly and with restrained emotion, to Don Juan's romantic verbal (verbal only) approaches. It is really not much of a role for a fine actress. Robert Douglas is as good a villain as you might find in any swashbuckler and gives a great performance as the evil Count. At this point in his career, an exceedingly obese Raymond Burr is just OK as a standard thug palace guard. Movie perennial Robert Warwick gives one of his best performances as the good Ambassador and friend of Don Juan; he makes his role more human and less cardboard than some of the other roles in this movie.Errol Flynn is carefully filmed to appear strong and handsome, but heavy make-up and no shirtless scenes are some of the techniques used to disguise the sad fact that that Flynn was forty-ish and not physically well. He seems to realize that he is too debilitated for the part, and while his acting is good (he was a competent actor always), he is a more mature man than his once swashbuckling self. He clearly knows this fact and admirably tries to portray more "Don Juan" than "swashbuckler", and as a result he is utterly charming and watchable. Battling full blown alcoholism, serious heart problems, malaria and according to his then wife and others, a morphine issue, its remarkable that he is able to complete a film at this point in his life, although he did manage to keep his fading career limping along in increasingly poorer films for a few more years before dying at age 50.Viewing this film I wonder why someone felt it necessary to put it together at all, but I guess swashbucklers were popular then. It seems unnecessary and basically just a retread with a fading and ill star. It is beautiful and well made technically but offers nothing at all that you could say was original.

" . . . but sheep remain sheep," the power-hungry Duke De Lorca tells DON JUAN in the key line from the latter's 1948 namesake flick. On The Day That Will Live On With Infamy (Pearl Harbor Sneak Attack, Dec. 7, 1941), the non-Democratic side of Congress had the top executives of DON JUAN's Warner Bros. under subpoena because Warner had dared warn American's about that party's buddy, Der Fuhrer, in countless movies. THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, for instance, was REALLY about Churchill and Hitler (the latter sharing Essex' fate, when all was said and done). Similarly, DON JUAN seems to be about the Spanish Royal Court in the last 1500s, but it ACTUALLY concerns Truman (Margaret) versus Tommy Dewey (De Lorca). DON JUAN himself represents the American G.I.s. Fresh from beating Hitler, they rode in to Margaret\Truman's rescue, even though the "fix" was in to elevate Dewey as a new "shepherd" for a nation of sheep. Since Warner Bros. took their eye off the eight ball in the early 1950s, General "I-Like-Ike" Eisenhower was able to pull off a military coup in 1952, and the only True Democrat since then--CAMELOT's John F. Kennedy--was rubbed out by the Mordred-like shrubbery in Texas.

The New Adventures of Don Juan is not quite as great as Captain Blood and especially The Adventures of Robin Hood(the latter being one of my favourite films). The film is lacking somewhat in romantic chemistry, which is surprising seeing that Don Juan is often portrayed as a womaniser, and Romney Brent plays Phillip as too much of a fool for my liking. But these quibbles are far outweighed by what is good about The New Adventures of Don Juan, the best assets almost equal to The Adventures of Robin Hood. The New Adventures of Don Juan looks fabulous with huge spectacular sets, lush photography and Technicolour and some of the best ever costumes(no wonder they won an Academy Award) for any film. Max Steiner's vibrant as well as elegiac music score compliments the film perfectly and, while not among the best film scores of all time like Korngold's for The Adventures of Robin Hood is(at least to me), is one of the composer's finest of a positively consistent body of work. The New Adventures of Don Juan boasts some deliciously witty dialogue, some fine sword play and some of the best fencing in film history, the standout of all the action being the truly exciting final duel between Juan and Lorca. And one mustn't miss that leap from the head of the staircase, done by a stunt double but the stunt itself is famous for a reason. The story is always entertaining and swiftly paced, of course a little standard and a little silly but those are ignorable. The characters are very memorable especially the charismatic Juan and the villainous Lorca. Vincent Sherman does a more than competent job directing, he has a good eye for detail and accommodates Flynn nicely, from personal opinion he does do a respectable job with the action. Errol Flynn may be older and been battling physical and health problems behind the scenes but you can't actually tell, he still looks fine and has lost little of the youthful vigour and heartiness that he had a decade plus earlier. The Swedish beauty Viveca Lindfors is every bit the beautiful regal Queen while Robert Douglas is superbly intimidating as Lorca and Alan Hale is appealingly witty. Raymond Burr makes an impression as a henchman. All in all, a near classic. 8/10 Bethany Cox