Based on a 1906 novel by Rafael Sabatini and subsequently dismissed as hack work by director King Vidor, 'Bardeleys the Magnificent' was a lost film until 2006, nearly a quarter of a century after Vidor's death.
It's certainly no 'Big Parade', although Eleanor Boardman (who married Vidor the same year it was made) would play the female lead a couple of year's later in Vidor's next major achievement, 'The Crowd', and is here a very attractive if too modern heroine (although that may be what makes her so attractive).
The emphasis is on romance rather than action, although enlivened by a last minute escape from the scaffold obviously based on Fairbanks but embellished (as elsewhere in the film) by Vidor's accomplished use of the camera.
Roy D'Arcy is a marvellous, sneeringly urbane villain who drops out of the film for quite a while; although during his absence an overdressed, baby-faced George K. Arthur enlivens the proceedings as a would-be villain hopelessly not up to the job.
It's certainly no 'Big Parade', although Eleanor Boardman (who married Vidor the same year it was made) would play the female lead a couple of year's later in Vidor's next major achievement, 'The Crowd', and is here a very attractive if too modern heroine (although that may be what makes her so attractive).
The emphasis is on romance rather than action, although enlivened by a last minute escape from the scaffold obviously based on Fairbanks but embellished (as elsewhere in the film) by Vidor's accomplished use of the camera.
Roy D'Arcy is a marvellous, sneeringly urbane villain who drops out of the film for quite a while; although during his absence an overdressed, baby-faced George K. Arthur enlivens the proceedings as a would-be villain hopelessly not up to the job.