Prince of Foxes (film)
| Prince of Foxes | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Henry King |
| Produced by | Sol C. Siegel |
| Written by | Milton Krims |
| Based on |
Prince of Foxes 1947 novel by Samuel Shellabarger |
| Starring |
Tyrone Power Orson Welles |
| Music by | Alfred Newman |
| Cinematography | Leon Shamroy |
| Edited by | Barbara McLean |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
|
Release date
|
December 23, 1949 |
|
Running time
|
107 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $2,550,000 (US rentals) |
Prince of Foxes is a 1949 film adapted from Samuel Shellabarger's novel Prince of Foxes. The movie starred Tyrone Power as Orsini and Orson Welles as Cesare Borgia.
In August 1500, Andrea Orsini (Tyrone Power), an artistic minor nobleman who is equally skilled with the brush, the sword, words, and women, serves the Machiavellian Prince Cesare Borgia (Orson Welles) as a soldier. Pleased with Andrea's ability to "follow my mind and keep his eyes fixed on the ultimate goal," Borgia selects Andrea to accomplish an intrigue: arrange the marriage of his widowed sister, Lucrezia (whose husband he has just had assassinated for the purpose), to Alfonso d'Este, the son of the Duke Ercole d'Este of Ferrara. By doing so, Borgia will remove Ferrara as an impediment to conquest of central Italy. In being selected, however, Andrea earns the enmity of Don Esteban Ramirez (Leslie Bradley), an ambitious mercenary captain and rival.
Andrea travels to Venice to sell some of his paintings to raise money for expenses. He meets the lovely Camilla di la Baglione (Wanda Hendrix), young wife of the elderly Count Marc Antonio Verano of Citta del Monte, and smitten with her, gallantly gives her a painting he was haggling to sell for a hundred ducats. Soon after, an assassin attempts to kill Andrea, but he thwarts the attack and spares the assassin to learn who hired him: the Duke Ercole d'Este. He hires the assassin, Mario Belli (Everett Sloane), as part of his own entourage. Resuming the mission, Andrea stops to visit the farm of a blacksmith's widow, reputed to be hiding gold stolen by her bandit son. She is actually his mother (Katina Paxinou), and he is in fact Andrea Zoppo, not the noble Orsini he pretends to be. The reunion is a rocky one, because the mother does not approve of her son's evil ways. Belli spies on them through a window. Andrea continues to Ferrara, where he succeeds in arranging the marriage by intimidating the duke and flattering Alfonso.
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