The Long Ships (1964)

The Long Ships is that rare old-school adventure that still feels big: real ships cutting through real seas, sun-baked locations, and a mythic treasure hunt that commits to its own legend with a straight face and a sly wink. Jack Cardiff stages the voyage like a storybook come to life, letting spectacle do the heavy lifting while Richard Widmark’s roguish Viking energy bounces beautifully off Sidney Poitier’s cool, commanding Moorish ruler. The tone is boisterous and colorful—part swashbuckler, part tall tale—where rival crews clash, cooperate, and charge forward on sheer bravado and greed. If you need gritty realism, this isn’t your harbor; but if you want a hearty, large-scale romp with humor, pageantry, and the kind of cinematic seafaring they don’t build anymore, it’s a voyage worth taking.

The Long Ships is clearly trying to be a big, colorful old-school swashbuckler: Vikings and Moors, exotic locations, a mythical golden bell, and two proud leaders forced into uneasy cooperation. The problem is the adventure often plays like a patchwork of set pieces glued together by a pretty flimsy, sometimes downright silly script, so the stakes and characters don’t land with much weight. Performances can feel stiff or oddly pitched, which makes the tone wobble between earnest epic and accidental camp. If you love 1960s spectacle, travelogue vibes, and can forgive clunky storytelling for the sake of swords-and-sails fun, there’s some enjoyment here—but if you need tight plotting, strong characterization, or consistent acting, this will test your patience.