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| Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 19 2012, 06:36 PM (445 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Aug 19 2012, 06:36 PM Post #1 |
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Ill at home this weekend (flu bug), I decided to watch one film from each category In The Balcony that hadn't been updated in August... so, a sci-fi, a cult, a detective, etc. Nobody's touched silents for awhile, so here we are, and I decided that since nobody'd done a review of this (there are a few comments from some of you, generally favorable, about this film in other threads) I would take a look at it. Made the same year as Don Juan and The Black Pirate, this was an MGM showcase for John Gilbert, produced by Irving Thalberg and directed by King Vidor. It's a quality production all around. Alas, MGM's rights expired in 1936, and all copies of the film were ordered destroyed. A print didn't turn up until 2006 in a private collection in France, missing reel 3 but otherwise intact. Great find! I enjoyed this movie, and gave it the rare "watch it back to back" double Gravy viewing. Back in the days of King Louis XIII, when kings wore satin britches and had hankies up their sleeves, John Gilbert is the world's greatest lover, the magnificent Bardelys, with a fetish for married women whose husbands are out of town. His rival is a pig named Châtellerault, who has just struck out with the lovely Roxalanne de Lavedan and bets Bardelys he can do no better. Well, Bardie (you don't mind if I call him Bardie, do you?) masquerades as a pleasant fellow whom he found mortally wounded on the way to Chateau de Lavedan, not knowing that the guy was the leader of a band plotting treason against good ol' King Louie. Romance, lotsa swordplay, threatened execution, a thrilling escape, and True Love awaits our hero on the road back to Paris. I found the film well-made, silly, entertaining. Eleanor Boardman is lovely and gives a charming, rich performance as Roxalanne; Roy D'Arcy is a pompous ass as Châtellerault; and Lionel Belmore, familiar from scores of 1930s films (he's the burgomaster in Frankenstein) is the Vicomte de Lavedan. The finale, meant to emulate the swashbuckling antics of Doug Fairbanks, is uber-silly (ever see a guy use a spear to climb up the side of a building?) but fun. So, let's talk about John Gilbert. The legend is that MGM's biggest male star had no voice for talkies, and that wrecked his career. He died of alcoholism while still in his 30s, a broken man. Another legend is that Louis B. Mayer had it in for him, and deliberately wrecked his career; this may be true to a degree, as his big talkie debut, His Glorious Night (directed by Lionel Barrymore) was a huge flop, laughed off the screen and as it's well known that Mayer and Gilbert couldn't stand each other. Having seen Gilbert talk recently in Hollywood Revue of 1929 (his voice was fine, his mannerisms were goofy) and now having seen him here, in which he has great presence but an acting style that surely was, shall we say, bizarre... I'm convinced that it was that style that did him in. The smoldering looks, the flowery speech, the over-theatrical gazes that nearly became glares. There's nothing WRONG with his performance, but it is very close to a parody of how bad acting looks. Gene Kelly and Jean Dujardin both nailed this guy. I think he was just old-fashioned when talkies came in, and nothing's more pathetic than last month's lover. The entire film, in fact, contains much to laugh at or with. It's an old-fashioned movie in ways it surely didn't intend to be, and at times the tongue isn't in the cheek but it could well be. There's a lovely, gorgeous, sexy, romantic sequence in which Gilbert & Boardman profess their love to each other while on a canoe ride through low-hanging branches next to the river. As beautiful as this scene is staged and filmed, I kept waiting for one of the branches to THWACK! Gilbert across the face. The DVD of Bardelys contains a documentary on Gilbert, his rare 1922 Monte Cristo film, and an informative booklet. Stills and added intertitles explain the missing reel 3. The film looks great and I liked the score very much; I listened to the orchestra, there's also commentary and a piano score. A very, very fun movie. Smoldering glares and all. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| Frank Hale | Aug 25 2012, 12:47 PM Post #2 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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You might be right about Mr. Gilbert, but as I mentioned he’s quite credible in his last film, “The Captain Hates the Sea”. I also recently enjoyed him in Desert Nights, his last silent. I kinda like the guy, not least because he hated Louis Mayer. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 26 2012, 04:23 PM Post #3 |
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Mouth Breather
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The tale as the ever-unreliable Kenneth Anger wrote it is that Gilbert decked Mayer in the bathroom of a Hollywood cabaret. It's a great story so I hate to dispute it, but really, is it likely? Would Mayer even be in a nightclub? |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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11:37 AM Jul 11