LadyHawke (1985)

I have a feeling that the title of this movie comes from the fact that Wolf Man was already taken.

Ladyhawke is a medieval romantic adventure that tells a great and tragic story that Shakespeare might have tackled.  It’s about a knight named Navarre (Rudgar Hauer) who is in love with a beautiful woman named Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) but both are cursed by an evil bishop.  She becomes a hawk by day and a human by night.  He, meanwhile, becomes a wolf by night and a human by day.  They are in love with one another but alas can never be together in human form.

That’s a beautiful and tragic love story and it is executed here with a lot of great light and shadow and music.  This really is a great love story that is able to rise above it’s novel concept and become something real.  There is a beautiful sequence halfway through the movie in which the two lovers glimpse each other at twilight before she reverts to her animal form.  It is one of the most magical and most beautiful romantic scenes that I have ever seen.

Where the movie will break for most people is the addition of a third character, Gaston the Mouse, played by Matthew Broderick.  He comes into Navarre’s service early in the picture but he is a wise-cracking rogue who is constantly offering asides and jokes and one-liners to the proceedings.

Did the movie need him?  Not really, but it is not to the movie’s detriment.  I like the lighter moments that come in between the moments of the romance.  This is not exactly a movie dripping with period detail.  It’s a fantasy, a Hollywood fantasy and a good one.