There was something magical about Sean Connery. He had a kind of magnetism that made you follow his movies without stopping looking at him. Possibly the suits. Nobody has liked a tux as well as him in Agent 007 against Dr. No. The sequence of the card game in which they ask him for his name and he answers that of “Bond, James Bond” while lighting a cigarette could not be more elegant. Another of his great assets was his talent for comedy. His role as the father of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is pure humor. History wins every time his self-absorbed face appears on the scene. And we can’t forget about his dazzling masculinity. One of the most attractive types that the cinema has given. At the height of Cary Grant. Another Brit, by the way.
Sean Connery soon caught the eye of Hollywood and many of the big names in the industry did not hesitate to work with him. We talk about heavyweights like Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Richard Attenborough or Steven Spielberg. If you look at his filmography, you will soon have the feeling of being in front of a collection of unforgettable characters. To those already mentioned we must add the Franciscan detective from The Name of the Rose, the untouchable police officer under Eliot Ness in Prohibition Chicago, the Berber leader Al Raisuli in that epic of sables and sand that is The Wind and the Lion. , or that crazy man who could reign in the bare mountains of Kafiristan.
Of all Connery, Robin and Marian’s career it is perhaps the one that offers me the greatest surprises. I approached her looking for a continuation of Errol Flynn’s adventures through those Warner sets in Robin of the Woods and what I discovered was a sentimental story between two people in the middle of their lives. A medieval love song in line with the great literary feats of that dark and admirable era.
The film, filmed in Spain, moves in highly dangerous terrain. Richard Lester presents a fall version of the Locksley hero with some comic touches. The gripping journey of the man who returns home from the Crusades and faces the tyrannies of the Sheriff of Nottingham fades into a tangle that sometimes tends to the absurd. But then a kind of miracle happens that changes everything. Robin and Marian meet at the foot of a stream. She has become a nun and he has achieved the status of a legendary warrior. It is demonstrated by the scars that furrow his chest from side to side. At one point the conversation stops. Audrey Hepburn removes her headdress and reveals her curly hair. Nothing else is shown. However, it is one of the most poetic nudes that cinema has given. Sean Connery falls silent and his fiery gaze takes them back to times gone by.
The climax happens in the final scene. Old lovers say goodbye forever. Robin is mortally wounded and Lady Marian delivers that monologue that reminds us so much of La Celestina for its passionate and sacrilegious content: «I love you, I love you more than anything else? More than love or joy or whole life. I love you more than God. Here they are both at an extraordinary level, respecting the pauses, speaking in whispers, avoiding any excess that could turn this intimate encounter into something grotesque, truly loving each other. Then Robin Hood holds his bow and in a last effort asks his friend Little John to bury them where the arrow falls. The rest is a blue sky through a window and a black dot fading to the horizon.
Gravity ended up defeating that arrow of the god Cupid and it touched down on October 31. Sean Connery died in the Bahamas surrounded by family, a long way from his native Scotland. A unique man was leaving in this way, a loved one for all of us who have grown up with his cinema. His characters, on the contrary, will continue to devour kilometers in that dreamlike firmament from which his films are made.
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