QUENTIN DURWARD (1971) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

QUENTIN DURWARD (1971) – This French-German television series ran for 13 half-hour episodes in Germany but just 7 52-minute episodes during its initial French run.

The story is based on Sir Walter Scott’s swashbuckling novel from 1823 and the action is set during the late 1460s in Scotland and France. 

Amadeus August stars as Quentin Durward, a fighting young Scotsman who is the sole surviving male from his Scottish clan after a brutal clan war wiped out the rest of his family. At present he is being sheltered in a monastery where the monks have told him the only way to stop the enemy clansmen from killing him to blot out his entire bloodline is to become a monk under a vow of celibacy.

The dashing and daring Quentin is reluctant, but the decision is taken out of his hands when the enemy clan raids the monastery in search of him. Quentin manages to escape and after shaking off all pursuit reaches the English Channel. 

Durward crosses the Channel into France and covertly makes his way to his sole distant relative, his maternal uncle Ludovic (Noel Roquevert). The uncle serves in the Scottish Guards, a corps of loyal mercenaries and political fugitives who have protected the kings of France since 1418. At present they protect King Louis the Eleventh.

Ludovic secures a position for Quentin as an archer in the Scottish Guards, where his archery and fencing skills make him stand out. While making his way to his uncle, our hero had met the beautiful Isabelle de Croye (Marie-France Boyer, above left).

That meeting took place at an inn called the Fleur de Lys, where Isabelle was also lying low. In her case her fugitive status was caused by her efforts to escape a forced marriage to one of the scheming courtiers of the Duke of Burgundy (William Sabatier), an enemy of King Louis XI (Michel Vitold). Over the course of the series, Quentin and Isabelle reenter each other’s lives multiple times and fall in love.

Our hero distinguishes himself to the king by saving him from a boar during a Royal Hunt. This prompts Louis XI to let Quentin escort Isabelle, who has sought sanctuary in his court, to the castle of the Bishop of Liege.

Ostensibly, the king is sending her there for further protection from the forced marriage back in Burgundy, but in truth Louis is plotting to have Isabelle fall into the hands of the villainous William de la Marck (Phillipe Avron). William, who really existed, was called the Wild Boar of the Ardennes and was a maverick military man and bandit whose troops were feared. 

Wanting de la Marck on his side, but not openly, Louis has surreptitiously offered Isabelle to William who, for his part, must seemingly ambush and abduct her as well as kill her escort Quentin Durward.

The rest of the series features Durward saving Isabelle from the assorted villainous and scheming noblemen who each want to marry her off to one of their favorites no matter what she herself wants. Ultimately, the Duke of Orleans (Denis Savagnant), into whose hands Isabelle and Durward have fallen, offers her hand in marriage to whoever brings him the head of William de la Marck, whose criminal depredations have finally gone too far.

Quentin Durward manages to be the man who delivers that head to the Duke of Orleans and wins Isabelle’s hand, to the delight of both of them. (Though in real life, William lived until 1485.) The two are married at the Notre Dame Abbey in Morienval. 

Obviously, even at 13 episodes, this series drastically cuts down the 3-Volume novel on which it is based. Like another French swashbuckler series I reviewed, The Flashing Blade, Quentin Durward makes a good watch for fans of derring-do. 

FOR MY REVIEW OF THE RUTGER HAUER/ PAUL VERHOEVEN SWASHBUCKLER SERIES FLORIS (1969 and 1975), SET DURING THE GUELDERS WARS OF THE 1500s, CLICK HERE.