In his New Yorker review of The Northman, Anthony Lane notes that “the period detail is unstinting,” adding that “scholars of Old Norse who were unconvinced by Tony Curtis’s miniskirt, banded with chevrons, in The Vikings (1958), will be reassured by Eggers’s dedication.”

But for the rest of us, The Northman is not reassuring in terms of emotional involvement. You just don’t give a damn about anyone except for Anya Taylor Joy‘s “Olga”, except she’s kept on a short leash.

Hence this view of Eggers from a producer who’s seen The Northman: “In another era, Eggers would be a landscape painter, but never a portrait painter — unwilling or unable to capture the soul of his subject, and only the technical details of their environment. He might paint one of those massive battlefield canvases where hundreds of warriors gouge each other’s vital organs out, but end up as stick figures of glory against a barren emotional terrain.”

Though clunky and unsubtle, Richard Fleischer‘s The Vikings does not present a barren emotional terrain. Obviously inauthentic by today’s standards, it gives you emotional material to chew on.

[Posted two or three times]: “One thing that still works in The Vikings‘ favor is the film’s refusal to dramatically amplify the fact that Kirk Douglas‘s Einar and Tony Curtis‘s Eric, mortal enemies throughout the film, are in fact brothers, having both been sired by Ernest Borgnine‘s Ragnar.

“Ten minutes from the conclusion Janet Leigh‘s Princess Morgana begs Douglas to consider this fraternity, and he angrily brushes her off. But when his sword is raised above a defenseless Curtis at the very end, Douglas hesitates. And then Curtis stabs Douglas in the stomach with a shard of a broken sword, and Douglas is finished.

“The way he leans back, screams ‘Odin!’ and then rolls over dead is pretty hammy, but that earlier moment of hesitation is spellbinding — one of the most touching pieces of acting Douglas ever delivered.

“I’m not trying to build The Vikings up beyond what it was — a primitive sex-and-swordfight film for Eisenhower-era Eloi. But it did invest in that submerged through-line of ‘brothers not realizing they’re brothers while despising each other’, and the subtlety does pay off.” — originally posted on 3.27.06, on the occasion of Richard Fleischer‘s passing.