This late silent era adventure features everything from gorgeous effects straight from the tradition of Melies to massive-scale set and production design that overshadows Griffith’s Intolerance. Fairbanks’ every pantomime is a flex of his acrobatic muscles and the story briskly covers a lot of territory over its two and a half plus hours. Basically this is the type of swashbuckling movie nostalgically referred to in movies like Singin in the Rain and The Artist, but in their loving mocking they don’t accurately represent the embrace of its own phantasm that this movie has.

Screened by The Albuquerque Film Club

–DB