Cossacks Carrying Horses Around the House

We watched Taras Bulba (1962) for pretty much 2 reasons:

• Yul Brynner
• To hear the immortal line: “Some day Cossacks will have better things to do than carry horses around the house!”

We caught a few minutes of the movie on TV many years ago and caught only that, and we’ve been wanting to watch every since.

It starts with a battle - Poles vs. Turks, and the Turks are winning. Then the Cossacks come sweeping in and save the day. The Poles offer to allow the Cossacks to become subjects to the Polish crown. When they refuse, the Poles turn on them, and take the steppe for their own. Cossacks, in disgrace, cut off their topknots. Cossack officer Taras Bulba (Brynner) retreats to the mountains to live quietly.

Years later, the Poles allow the Cossacks some freedom, even to wear the topknot. Brynner tells his sons, Tony Curtis and Perry Lopez, to go to school in Kiev, to learn the ways of the enemy. They are not treated well there, and get into amusing scrapes. Also, Curtis falls in love with a Polish princess, Christine Kaufman. Finally, they are forced to flee for home.

There, they find that the tribes are gathering. There is drinking and merriment, and a beautiful white horse is presented (inside the house) to Brynner. That’s where one Cossack shows off by lifting the horse off the ground. Ms. Spenser was very disappointed: one horse, not horses, lifted, not actually carried around. Oh well.

The gathering is to decide whether to help the Poles with another fight. Some are ready to go - a fight is a fight, after all. But Brynner wants to attack the Poles when they are pre-occupied. So they go off and route the Poles, driving them into a walled city. The Cossacks set up a siege.

Curtis finds out that his princess is in the city and suffering under the siege conditions. He sneaks in and finally agrees to break the siege for the Poles. So we have a father/son fight, leading to Curtis being killed. The Cossacks prevail, and Curtis is buried there, now on Cossack soil.

Frankly, this is not a great movie. Brynner is amazing, with his bare chest and topknot. But there isn’t enough of him. I don’t know why they keep casting Curtis in these roles (“Yonda lies da castle of my faddah”) - maybe his “dark good looks” used to be considered “exotic”. There are a few stirring battles, slightly marred by obvious dummy men and horses falling off cliffs. Also, the anti-Semitic angle (Pole = Jew) has been erased, but the smell remains.

Still, we do have a Cossacks lifting a horse.