The Love Light (1921)

Mary Pickford as Angela

Certain films, no matter how far removed we may be from the time and culture that created them, never lose their immediate appeal. A thousand years from now, if people are still watching movies, they'll still be laughing at the Little Tramp.  Others, however, require us to calibrate our expectations somewhat, to place the work in the context of its time and intended audience. Most likely, the creators of these films never intended them to be viewed this way. The majority of movies, even as late as the 1970's, were meant to be enjoyed by a contemporary audience only. It wasn't until the video age that filmmakers really started to think about making films for posterity. To accuse a film like The Love Light of ridiculous overacting and stomach-turning melodrama, then, is not really fair. After all, we are not the film's intended audience and are likely judging it by a set of standards no one in 1921 could have anticipated.

The Gaucho (1927)

Douglas Fairbanks as The Gaucho, perched on his horse.

The Gaucho is Fairbanks at his very finest. He was in the best shape of his life. His stunt sequences had been getting progressively more elaborate throughout his career, and by 1927 were just dazzling. Raw athleticism combined with his rugged good looks and boyish charm made Fairbanks a joy to watch. It is not that he is stronger or more agile than other performers. Impressive as his work is, it would not be hard to find a dozen performers who could duplicate any of his on-screen acrobatics. No, it is not the technical difficulty of his performance that makes him legendary but the grace and pizazz he brings to his feats of skill. It almost seems, at times, that extra tables surely are put into every film set just so Fairbanks will have more props to leap over effortlessly, a wide grin on his face the whole time.

The Films of Douglas Fairbanks: Introduction

Douglas Fairbanks

In the 1920's, Douglas Fairbanks was the biggest action star the world had ever known, but he got there in a round about sort of way. He started out in comedy, making simple “boy-meets-girl-but-then-something-gets-in-the-way-so-he-has-to-get-chased-all-over-town-and-perform-outlandish-stunts-before-he-can-marry-her” films, not unlike the Harold Lloyd thrill-seekers of the 1920's. Fairbanks’ comedies are all but forgotten today in favor of his better-known adventure films, but it was in comedy that he first established himself as one of the three most successful stars in Hollywood, along with Charlie Chaplin and Fairbanks’ own future wife, Mary Pickford. For several years, Fairbanks had become increasingly involved in the practical side of filmmaking, leading up to his co-founding of United Artists with Chaplin, Pickford, and director D.W. Griffith in 1919. When he made his first foray into serious action films with 1920’s The Mark of Zorro, Fairbanks was a well-established star of thirty-seven, and a full career reboot was the last thing anyone could have expected, particularly when this meant taking on projects of a scale and complexity that made them phenomenally more expensive than his earlier works. The Mark of Zorro was a hit, however, and Fairbanks never looked back. Over the next nine years he made a total of eight more costumed adventure films, cementing his reputation as cinema’s first (and arguably greatest) swashbuckler.