Robin and Marian (1976)

Film: Robin and Marian (1976)

Stars: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Nicol Williamson, Richard Harris, Denholm Elliott, Ian Holm

Director: Richard Lester

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Audrey Hepburn: click here to learn more about Ms. Hepburn (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Audrey Hepburn's time as America's Sweetheart can pretty much be bookended between two of her signature roles: Princess Ann in Roman Holiday and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, but that doesn't mean that she stopped acting after these roles.  As New Hollywood was rolling out, she starred in Two for the Road, which is a now-beloved film (that honestly fits the New Hollywood motif better than most films starring Classical Hollywood stars) and Wait Until Dark, a thriller that won Hepburn her fifth and final Oscar nomination.  But Hepburn wasn't a great fit for New Hollywood, and after the stress of two flops (How to Steal a Million and Two for the Road), she was more interested in a quiet life of domesticity with her family.  She only acted occasionally after 1967, working with Steven Spielberg on Always and with Peter Bogdonavich in his famed flop They All Laughed.  The film that feels the most at-home to her style of the movies Hepburn made during this "retirement" period was Robin and Marian, the first film she made nine years after Wait Until Dark, starring then one of the biggest leading men in Hollywood, Sean Connery.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on the legend of Robin Hood (Connery) when he is old.  We are long beyond the days of his youthful dalliances with Maid Marion (Hepburn), and when he returns to England after the death of King Richard (Harris), he finds her to be a nun, and one that's about to be arrested by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Shaw).  This sets in motion a final stand sort of film, as Robin Hood, now an aging legend, having to once again fight for Maid Marion, but both of them are older, wiser, and filled with the regrets that youth cannot understand.  The film also shows the Sheriff, understanding his best days are behind him, and with some regret over having to kill the man who also made him notorious.  In the end, both men die, with the Sheriff giving Robin a wound that will leave him crippled the rest of his life before Robin stabs him through the stomach, and in a twist, Maid Marion kills both herself & Robin Hood (in most stories, this is an Abbess who does it for the reward money), with them soon to be buried by L'il John (Williamson) outside the priory for all time.

The movie is weirdly reminiscent of a lot of films we've seen in the past 25 years.  The idea of taking a lighter story, making it somber & giving it a more modernist gaze has been used on everyone from Batman to Archie Andrews in film and television.  The problem with Robin and Marian is that it doesn't fully go this route.  The 1970's was not a time when we saw a lot of successful historical epics similar to those that had been popular in the 1950's & 60's; arguably the best one was The Man Who Would Be King the year before that also starred Sean Connery.  This meant that the story tries to have some lighthearted moments that don't work at all, and it moves too quickly.  We need more investment in the love story or in the Robin Hood history to make the dramatic, heart-wrenching ending work.  The juxtaposition of Hepburn & Connery is a good pairing.  Despite Connery becoming a movie star a decade later than Hepburn (and continuing to star in movies well into the 1990's), he's just a year younger than Hepburn, and so they pair nicely (and age appropriately).  But the script can't capitalize on the unusual chemistry between the two, chiffon-and-sandpaper laced together beautifully.

Hepburn, as I said, rarely worked in the years that followed, either on stage or on screen.  She did continue to work with UNICEF, though, through charitable work she'd started in the 1950's.  As a child, she had endured the German occupation of the Netherlands, and so had great sympathy for how war & poverty impacted young people, and worked steadily on vaccination & hunger missions throughout the world in conjunction with UNICFE.  She would win the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (a second Oscar) and the Presidential Medial of Freedom for her work, but abdominal cancer cut her life short.  At a funeral where Elizabeth Taylor bought the flowers and Gregory Peck read a poem, Audrey Hepburn, America's Sweetheart, died at the young age of 63.

Next month, we're going to talk about an actress who lived much longer than Hepburn, but was her peer, both in terms of their career peaks occurring during the 1950's, but also in a self-imposed retirement that happened as New Hollywood took away their title of America's Sweetheart.  We will talk about her more on Wednesday.