I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori (1983), aka Hearts & Armour, is a very loose adaptation of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The film centers around the romances and conflicts between Christian paladins and the Saracen nobility. And although magic is featured in the film, the narrative is far more concerned with the seemingly doomed romances at its center, making it an outlier in the canon of “sword and sorcery” movies made in the eighties.
Director Giacomo Battiato pours his soul into I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori. Like Michael J. Murphy, Battiato’s greatest feat as a filmmaker is making the most of a meager budget. To do this Battiato embraces a minimalist production design and opts to shoot scenes in long takes. This not only gets more spectacle for less money but also reduces the epic romance to its most fundamental narrative parts.
Silly suits of armour aside, I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori is a subtly beautiful film. The battles are well choreographed and shot while the love scenes recreate the erotic mysticism of Excalibur (1981). Everything that happens between scenes of combat and scenes of sex is filler that lacks the cinematic poetry that, in these instances, recreates the chivalrous romanticism of the source text.
I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori great flaw is that it is underwritten. This is the reason why the best parts of the film are non-dialogue driven scenes. In I Paladini: Storia d’armi e d’amori none of the characters are developed beyond their romantic infatuations. These are two dimensional figures who, by virtue of being under written, undermine the dramatic stakes of the narrative. It would be easier for the viewer to invest in a character if that character had any sort of voice at all.
