The Sword and the Rose is Walt Disney's latest live-action (as distinguished from animated cartoon) feature, a re-rendering of the tried and true When Knighthood Was in Flower, Hoosier novelist Charles Major's best seller of 1899-1900. It was a pleasant and adventuresome historical novel, a stage hit with Julia Marlowe in 1901, and a fair silent movie, with Marion Davies in the mid-nineteen-twenties. In_ this present version, it is Disney's best noncartoon feature to date, a handsomely mounted and brightly entertaining blend of pageantry and romance, of swordplay, sentiment and solid historical accuracy,
I dont know what Disney's particular magic is in these film versions of popular semiclassics, but I have been feeling since Treasure Island that he is far and away more expert in this medium (and in his animal shorts) than in the animated features he continues to produce. Peter Pan was an improvement on Cinderella, but it still lacked the excitement and lasting beauty of Snow White. In cartoons, Disney, to me, has become dismayingly predictable—and dull In live action, praise be, he is just the opposite.
What makes The Sword and the Rose a standout in a boom era of historical and quasi-historical swashbuckling films is its elusive quality of simplicity and sincerity. It is doubtful if The Sword and the Rose will gross as big a box-office bonanza as Quo Vadis or Salome or Ivanhoe, but it is a better picture than any of them.
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