The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)

Director:

Archie Mayo

Writers:

N.A. Pogson (story)
Robert E. Sherwood (screenplay)

Release Date:

15 April 1938 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Biography | Romance

Plot:

Marco Polo travels from Venice to Peking, where he quickly discovers spaghetti and gunpowder and falls in love with the Emperor's daughter...

Plot Keywords:

Himalayan Mountains | Peking China | Male Female Relationship | Chemist | Christian

Cast

Gary Cooper	...	Marco Polo
Sigrid Gurie	...	Princess Kukachin
Basil Rathbone	...	Ahmed
George Barbier	...	Kublai Khan
Binnie Barnes	...	Nazama
Ernest Truex	...	Binguccio
Alan Hale	...	Kaidu
H.B. Warner	...	Chen Tsu
Robert Greig	...	Chamberlain (as Robert Grieg)
Ferdinand Gottschalk	...	Persian Ambassador
Henry Kolker	...	Nicolo Polo
Lotus Liu	...	Visakha
Stanley Fields	...	Bayan
Harold Huber	...	Toctai
Lana Turner	...	Nazama's Maid

Runtime:

104 min (copyright length)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White (Sepiatone)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

USA:TV-G (TV rating) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Argentina:Atp | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #3857) | Australia:G (TV rating)

Filming Locations:

Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Company:

Samuel Goldwyn Company, The

Trivia:

Mrs. Ng as "Chen Tsu's Mother" is in studio records/casting call lists, but the character did not appear in the movie. Because of period and location makeup, some of the other actors are difficult to recognize.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Slaying the Dragon (1988) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Charming Eyes

Spaghetti was a Chinese invention!

This is one of the oddest films to be made in pre-war America. Gary Cooper plays the Venetian explorer, and the film opens in a Venice seemingly constructed of cardboard. Here he is pursued by his comic servant, a sort of cross between a midget and a hyperactive gondolier.

In no time at all, we are in the mysterious realm of Cathay, where the streets are exotic, but seemingly made of cardboard as well. Marco is attracted by a strange voice - these medieval Chinese (or Mongols?)speak with impeccable Oxbridge accents. And this one, oddly enough, is reading to his children on some sort of verandah facing the street. This public recitation is from the New Testament, and Marco immediately completes the phrase, as it were. The placid mandarin figure takes this in his stride, and happens to mention that he is treating his son to a crash course in both eastern and western wisdom - which is not bad for a place that has not yet been visited by a European.

Soon our Gary (er, Marco) is served a mysterious oriental dish called 'spaghet', which he thinks he will introduce to Venice when he returns.

At the royal palace (made of a superior form of cardboard), he is soon immersed in the intrigues of the court of Kublai Khan. After some swashbuckling and some overacting, he falls for a beautiful princess. Alas, she is pledged to another, but our hero is given the task of escorting her to her intended.

And so they sail away into the sunset on a large sea-going junk (!), and he states that he will at least have her to himself for the year long voyage. The film ends on this morally dubious note, and the implication is that he eventually returned with his spaghetti to Venice and opened a restaurant.