The enduring, swashbuckling classic The Mark of Zorro marked a high point in Mamoulian’s Hollywood career, a box office and critical success that embodied the expressionistic and emotionally charged fantasy from which Mamoulian crafted his finest films. 20th Century Fox superstar Tyrone Power excels as the titular hero, returned from Spain to Los Angeles with a cunning determination to free the people from the grip of a cruel and power-hungry overlord in the guise of a wily proto-superhero (Zorro, of course, being Bruce Wayne’s inspiration). The Mark of Zorro was a personal project of Darryl Zanuck and a showcase for his often undersung talents as a screenwriter and inventor of action thrillers (such as the Rin Tin Tin series). It was Zanuck who invented the richly understated love triangle at the film’s center among Power, the enigmatic Gale Sondergaard and Linda Darnell, only sixteen years old when she was lavishly reinvented as a Spanish señorita. Mamoulian’s spirited remake of the 1920s Douglas Fairbanks classic was openly offered as a response to the swashbuckling trend begun by Warner Brothers’ The Adventures of Robin Hood two years earlier, even taking key actors from that film, with both Eugene Pallette offering basso profundo comic relief and Basil Rathbone returning again as a dastardly villain with a tongue as sharp as his saber.