Secret button on King Arthur's sword Nathan Juran (American film director, screenwriter, artist and producer of Romanian origin) entered the film business in 1937. The first film in his filmography was Aunt Charles, where he worked as an artist. Then Juran worked in this capacity in a number of paintings. In 1952, the film “Unconquered Frontier” was released, where Juran performed as an artist for the last time. In the same year, Juran made his directorial debut – the film Black Castle. The director shot pictures in different genres - fiction, western, fantasy, adventure, detective, etc. Several fantastic paintings of Juran became cult and are considered classics.
“Saxons seize the throne” is an adventure tale about the legendary leader of the Britons of the V-VI century, who defeated the conquerors-Saxons. King Arthur is the central hero of the British epic and numerous knightly novels. Until now, historians have found no evidence of Arthur’s historical existence, although many people admit the existence of his historical prototype. Nathan Juran put his own “fog” into the topic, adding Robert (Ronald Lewis), in which Robert of Loxley easily guesses, as well as “shuffling” the rest of the characters.
It all looks fun and funny, although the appearance of King Arthur (Mark Dignam) or Merlin (John Laurie) somehow does not fit with the conventional idea of these mythical heroes. However, Nathan has his own view of history and fiction. And there and there in the first place is not plausibility, but entertainment. In this regard, the costumed fairy tale “Saxons seize the throne” looks quite good, although the abundance of scenes with “insurance” music, which is called “out of nowhere”, spoil the overall impression, as well as strange directorial “finds”. For example, the sounding of a “volley” of bows is a pure automatic queue, and only! In general, Nathan’s fairy tale turned out peculiar: in places – naive, in places – ridiculous, in places – funny.