1940-ish LOTR Movie

[Valandil]

At times we've talked about what it would be like to have favorite movie stars of old playing various roles in a movie production of LOTR. Well - now we can see them!

Check out this heretofore undiscovered movie with a 1940's take on LOTR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xruJ10C19U

They DID cut out a bit. A few characters and locations are missing, and some parts of the story become simplified. But... what do you expect for 8 minutes?

I wonder what JRRT thought of this?

[Nurvingiel]

I love this.

Humphrey Bogart! Marlene Dietrich! More information on this brilliant adaptation can be found here.

I missed Aragorn, but at least there was no Arwen to steal Frodo's lines.

Edit:

Also...

Frodo: You are wise Lady. I would give the Ring to you.
Galadriel: Get out.

[Valandil]

Yes - I admit they took a few liberties with the script. But such streamlining was all in keeping with making the story more comprehensible to movie audiences (of the 1940's) - don't you think?



And... I like what Galadriel says to Frodo before he offers her the Ring.

Also like the 'reception' Frodo got at Weathertop.

[Nurvingiel]

I agree that there were some liberties, but they were done artistically with the whole story in mind. In this way I think it's better than Jackson's version, because they didn't dumb it down with dwarf tossing jokes and the like.

I love the whole exchange between Galadriel and Frodo, but for some reason I could only remember that bit when I went to write it down. My brain...

Weathertop was great. So was the Balrog! And Smeagol was fantastic.

[Earniel]

What a cute interpretation!

The Weathertop scene was nice. If only the nazgul had been so straighforward, in the book, they might have saved themselves a lot of trouble. "Stay out of Mordor."

The Isengard scene was rather... unconventional, but effective.

[Varnafindë]

This version was a lot darker than Peter Jackson's version.
In many ways.

But it stuck to the point, very efficiently.

[Jon S.]

Did anyone else notice that the screenplay is listed as by Raymond Chandler? I've always dug him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler

[Midge]

Gandalf: Egads, Frodo. You are one remarkable hobbit.

Sam: Mr. Frodo, you need help on the Quest, boss?
Frodo: No, Sam. You can stay here.

Cuz that's how it really happened. Tolkien's version was total exaggeration.

Is Elrond a little old man in a wheelchair?

What on earth is up with Galadriel's accent? "You must fahnd your own wahy"... ?

Peter Lorre as Gollum has redeemed this whole thing. But Frodo threw the ring TO Mt. Doom from Shelob's Lair! Oh, my goodness!

I liked how they kept making references to random things from the book (like Frodo calling the Balrog "Flame of Udun") while they've made the rest of it sort of like only the story is based on the book. The setting is in a city, and it works with the way they have the Nazgul at Weathertop, and even Saruman. But the real LOTR references kind of make you wonder why they're walking around a city.

Maybe it's like with us, they had to have some in there to placate those with Tolkien obsessions who had actually read the books...

[Varnafindë]

This link to the same movie has as one of its comments,

Well, Tom Bombadil was only invented in the 1955 novelization of the original 1944 movie to beef it up a little.

(my emphasis)