The lamentable spoof now before us was conceived as a starring vehicle for Peter Sellers, who plays three role with no vitality the expiring old king the new king, a twit with a lisp and a look-alike British cabbie who is recruited for unlikely heroic imposture by the king's desperate advisors, played by Lionel Jeffries and Simon Williams. The most famous and satisfying of the straightforward film versions is John Cromwell's 1937 production with Ronald Colman. Rudolf, a foreigner but an inheritor of the telltale resemblance, finds himself in a unique position to aid the unfortunate king (another Rudolf) while on holiday in the politically volatile Ruritania. Since that scandal, the male progeny of the Rassendylls would display a curious Ruritanian taint every so often. Three generations earlier a King Rudolf of Ruritania had had a notorious affair with a Rassendyll lady that resulted in a fatal duel and a long-nosed, red-haired offspring who was the spitting image of the king.
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Rassendyll could pretend to be the king of mythical Ruritania only because he and the newly crowned monarch-who is abducted by a usurper-were in fact kinsmen. But the liberties it takes are seldom justified.įor example, eliminating the dashing, intrepid hero, Rudolf Rassendyll, eliminates the delightful genetic joke that rationalized the plot to begin with.
![the prisoner of zenda plot the prisoner of zenda plot](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F6E282/release-date-november-14-1952-movie-title-the-prisoner-of-zenda-studio-F6E282.jpg)
The strange new version of "The Prisoner of Zenda" opening today at area theaters aspires to be a comic travesty on Anthony Hope's durable, rousing adventure story.