The following is my entry in Nathaniel R.’s mighty, massive Action Heroines Blogathon. There are one or two spoilers ahead, but you’ll probably forget them before you see the movie.

Before feminism and wu xia flicks created both a women’s and co-ed division of action filmmaking, Hollywood was a long way from even imagining characters like Ripley, much less Beatrix Kiddo. Leading women in studio-era action films came in three basic flavors: sexy villains, spunky virgins, or sheer ornamentation. Sure, the gun-tottin’ women of Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar and Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns were powerful, but we were supposed to regard them as borderline freaks — or how do you explain all those whips?

Women tended to play larger roles in swashbucklers than Westerns. But even in the many versions of The Three Musketeers, which features several strong female characters including the terrifying Milady, these women are prizes to be won or harpies to be fought. They generally function pretty much in the same way that women do in one of the better James Bond films. Not horrible, but not all that empowering.

There are exceptions, but in a lifetime of watching films from all eras and around the world, I don’t think I’ve ever seen women function in a more or less traditional action picture quite like they do in 1952’s Scaramouche. These women don’t take up arms, or even whips, but they still find a way to righteously beat their men into submission. The film’s two heroines — a tempestuous actress (Eleanor Parker) and a virtuous young noblewoman (Janet Leigh) in love with the same man — might fit Hollywood’s standard good girl/bad girl paradigm, but only superficially. Standard issue sexism aside, the “good girl” might be a sheltered virgin, but she’s emotionally strong and willing to risk her life for someone she cares about, and the “bad girl” is the film’s most heroic character.

As directed by George Sidney and adapted very loosely by screenwriters Ronald Millar and George Froeschel from Rafael Sabatini’s episodic historical novel, Scaramouche is both a comedic love story and a potentially tragic tale of revenge. Stewart Granger plays actor Andre Moreau, the bastard son of an unknown nobleman. When his younger foster brother and best friend, Phillippe (Richard Anderson), writes a revolutionary pamphlet that manages to find its way into the bedroom of none other than Marie Antoinette (Nina Foch), he is hunted down by Mel Ferrar as Noel, the dashing Marquis de Maynes.

Sadly for Phillippe, de Maynes is — wait for it — the greatest swordsman in all France and a serial killer/political assassin whose MO involves goading greatly inferior untrained swordsmen into duels they are certain to lose. (Rafael Sabatini coined the word “spadassinicide” to describe de Maynes’ avocation. Don’t bother trying to find it in the dictionary. Don’t try pronouncing it, either.)

Spadass mofo

Idealistic and stupid, Phillippe inevitably dies fighting de Maynes. Witnessing the murder, the impetuous Andre swears vengeance by the sword — even though he knows nothing of fencing. Eventually, Andre finds the man who taught de Maynes to sword fight and begins taking lessons, determined to become an even greater greatest-swordsman-in-all-France and kill the bloodthirsty aristocrat on the field of honor. Since he’s an actor, he hides in plain sight while learning his new craft, performing the part of Scaramouche, a masked stock character from commedia dell’arte.

But that’s only half the story. Violence and revenge is the business of boys who never mature and a distraction from more important matters like love and marriage. It’s the women’s job to make sure the film is ultimately a comedy, not a tragedy, and they do so by trying prevent the men from acting like the kill-happy idiots they are.

The pattern of women restraining men’s murderous impules begins immediately. The film opens with a nearly wordless sequence in which de Maynes joyfully slaughters one semi-innocent noble and nearly takes out another before he is interrupted by an immediate summons from Marie Antoinette (Nina Foch). The fact that the summons is from an actual queen is not random — all noble women are queens in Noel de Mayne’s world, and they are his only interest other than stylish violence. And this queen is not only temporally powerful, she packs a real emotional wallop: de Maynes is in love with her.

And she’s angry. With all this silly revolution talk, she simply can’t have aristocrats murdering each other “piecemeal or in bunches.” She is mollified, and extremely turned-on, once de Maynes tells her has been defending her own honor — which, given all the heaving bosoms and downward glances, clearly requires a vigorous defense. Fortunately, the appearance of three little words — “Liberté, Fraternité, Equalité” — under the queen’s very pillow allows Noel to go out and murder someone openly.

But first, isn’t it time a man of de Mayne’s means was married to a suitable young woman? And so he is quickly introduced to the innocent, brutally honest Aline de Gavrilac (Leigh). Aline is properly cautious, but we can see that de Mayne is clearly smitten from the start. It’s only a matter of a few minutes of screen time before his future nemesis, Andre Moreau, falls in love with her as well.

Janet Leigh brings the same askew wit she’d bring to films like The Manchurian Candidate a few years later, and in her hands the “spirited” Aline would be heroine enough for any conventional swashbuckler, but she’s overshadowed by Eleanor Parker’s Lenore. On the surface, Lenore fits any number of stereotypes. She is Judy to Andre’s Punch; she is the mid-20th century fantasy of the saucy spitfire; and she is the sexually available “fallen” actress. But the film takes none of these stereotypes seriously. As a low-born woman of accomplishment, her open sexuality, hot temper, and propensity for non-lethal violence is the only means for her to gain the respect she demands and deserves. She’s just a grown-up woman with a practical nature, able to use both her sexual attractiveness and her ability to draw blood to meet a desired end, and she is determined that the man she loves a man not be killed, even if he is a bastard in both senses of the word.

Her goal comes at no small cost because to do this, she must enlist the help of her romantic rival. Aline is only two willing to keep Andre from receiving his just revenge, because she’s a bit torn herself. She loves Andre, but because of a plot complication (Andre believes she is his half-sister) he is so obviously distracted and behaving so platonically that a girl might start to wonder. And while deMaynes may be psychopath with men, with women he’s actually kind of a sweetheart. He sincerely loves Aline and she is not immune. Keeping both men alive suits her just fine.

Of course, this is a swashbuckler and there has to be a big movie sword fight — in this case, the longest and arguably best big movie sword fight of the 20th century — but the resolution is not the usual one. The film’s opinion or vengeance is not a high one and the women’s view that, the murder of Phillipe notwithstanding, the men need not kill each other is ultimately vindicated. Director Sidney allows Mel Ferrer’s despicable de Maynes so much humanity and even honor that we’re likely to think that forced retirement from the murder game is punishment enough. (It also helps that his original victim, Phillippe, barely registers as a character. If he were more real as a character, we might really hate ourselves for liking de Maynes even a little.)

But it’s the fight’s aftermath that really throws us. Lenore’s ultimate act of heroism is to sacrifice her love for Andre on the grounds that she is not really “the marrying type,” but actually because she knows that Andre has his heart set on the younger, more conventionally marriageable Aline. When I first saw the film as a teenager, not yet fully aware of Hollywood convention, I was disappointed by the outcome, and I still am. Andre needs constant stimulation. Over the years, Aline will grow impatient with his childish restlessness and he’ll grow bored. For a guy who, in Sabatini’s famous opening line, was “born with the gift of the laughter and a sense that the world was mad,” he’s a pretty conventional fool.

Still, if Andre had wised up, we wouldn’t have Lenore’s final speech in which she gives up Andre. As written it’s good Hollywood melodrama but not quite “We’ll always have Paris.” It doesn’t matter. Parker’s delivery, in perfect gauzy close-ups, complete with sparkly and glistening tears, brings out the pain and the pride and we feel every word. In fact, the pain is almost too real for an MGM full-dress period peace. And so the filmmakers show Lenore and us a little mercy. They allow the idea that Lenore may get to live at least as happily ever after as Andre and Aline.

To do this, they end the film on a very silly joke historical joke that seems to allow Lenore a far more exciting life than Andre and Aline’s undoubtedly conventional and child-bearing marriage will ever allow them. Clearly, they knew that a lot of the audience would be rooting for Lenore like me. And why shouldn’t they. She’s the smartest and most heroic character on screen, and she knows how to put on a brave face.