NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

kijii This expensive classic silent was the box office hit that started Rudolph Valentino's career as a starring actor. It is both an epic and a family saga.The movie starts in Argentina with a wealthy landowner, Madariaga the Centaur (Pomeroy Cannnon), and his two daughters; one is married to a German, Karl von Hartrott (Alan Hale) and has three sons. The other is married to a Frenchman, Marcelo Desnoyers (Josef Swickard) and is awaiting her first child. Not favoring von Hartrott or his family, Madariaga is happy to learn that his other daughter has a boy who he names Julio. As Julio (Rudolph Valentino) grows up, it is clear that the powerful grandfather prefers him over all his other grandchildren. He spoils him, teaching him no values or skills. When Madariaga dies, his estate is split equally between his two daughters. Hartrott decides to sell his half and take his family back to his fatherland, Germany. Desnoyers follows suit by taking his family to France. When the useless Julio moves to France, he studies art (probably to paint nude women) but is better known as a local Tango dancer. While out on the town, Julio meets a young married woman, Marguerite Lurier (Alice Terry). They fall in love and have a prolonged affair. Her husband, Etienne (John St. Polis), discovers it and demands satisfaction from Julio. Julio's father begs his old friend, Etienne, not to start a family scandal by dueling with his son. During this time, the Great War breaks out. As war engulfs Europe, all personal issues fade away as powerful symbols of war (the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse) take their place on the stage. Almost all the Frenchmen, including Etiene, enlist in the army. Since the Desnoyers family is not French, they remain behind as civilians. Eventually, however, they are also drawn into the war as Julio becomes a French soldier. Marguerite becomes a nurse and discovers her husband has become blind while in battle. She is then torn between her duty to her husband and her love for Julio. The war also inevitably causes the Desnoyers to clash with the Hartrotts, with cousin fighting against cousin. Eventually,the war recedes and shows us its aftermath. Although the message of the movie is strongly antiwar, it uses the techniques of romanticism—symbolic imagery and title cards laced with poetry—rather than the more gut-wrenching realism that we would later see in other World War I movies such as The Big Parade and Wings

Michael Neumann World War One might truly have been the apocalypse of its age, but from today's enlightened perspective beneath the Damoclean Sword of nuclear escalation it's just another quaint Old Empire slaughter. Considered a classic by some scholars, this passionate but dated attack on the war-to-end-all-wars serves today only to highlight the shortcomings of serious silent drama: overwrought histrionics; an emotional dependence on expository title cards; simplistic moralizing; etc. Granted, the best-selling novel from which it was adapted had its own problems: to explain how two brothers could be fighting each other from opposite sides of the trenches it had to first establish a mutual history in neutral South America, where a large ranch family becomes divided by filial allegiances to, respectively, the distant flags of Germany and France. Of chief historical interest is the fiery tango scene that made young Rudolph Valentino an international star, but the dance merely accounts for five lively minutes in an otherwise moribund two-hour-plus melodrama.

kirksworks Directed by Rex Ingram, this silent version of the Vicente Blasco Ibanez anti-war novel is more famous for Valentino's tango than just about anything else, but I was drawn to see it because it is always compared more favorably to the Vincente Minnelli remake of 1962. Well, though it may be sacrilegious to say so, I think the film is quite good, but I still prefer the remake. Yes, the remake has flaws, but its expansion of Julio's romance with Marguerite was a definite improvement on the dramatics of the original. Julio does not take center stage in the silent version, and as a result I never got as emotionally involved in the characters as I did with Minnelli's characters, which were more fully developed. Minnelli knew how to handle actors, and his version of the story clearly reveals that skill. What the silent version does better than the remake is show the horrors and scale of war. On the other hand, the remake does a very good job of showing the corruption. Valentino had one great sequence in the Ingram film, and it is his first scene doing the tango. He's amazingly charismatic. The sequence at the end, however, when Julio and his German cousin meet on the battlefield felt rushed, even a bit clumsily handled and for me didn't have the impact that it could have. The following scenes showing the reactions of the families upon hearing of their son's deaths had more emotional weight. Rex Ingram's silent version may not be the ultimate classic its reputation would have us believe, but it does have a lot to offer and the story unfolds well. The cinematography and sets were spectacular. The film is a real epic production, truly gargantuan. The new orchestral score by Carl Davis for the version that was shown on TMC is one of the composer's best, ringing every emotional moment that can be had from the powerful visuals. The image of the four horsemen riding through the war torn sky was a bit overused, but occasionally very effective in commenting on the horrors of war, somewhat like a Greek chorus. One thing this version also does better than the remake is the fleshing out of the back story of Madariaga, Julio's grandfather. It's more clear why he so favors his grandson, Julio. It was there in the remake, but not as delineated. Although both versions of the story are flawed, they are still worth seeing, and are so very different from one another. By all means, see the silent version with Davis' score. It's a knockout.

MARIO GAUCI I had always wanted to watch this Silent version of the Vicente Blasco Ibanez novel (who, incidentally, wrote MARE NOSTRUM as well - also filmed by Ingram in 1926), especially since it's considered to be vastly superior to the 1961 Vincente Minnelli remake in color and widescreen - which is a film I've watched quite a few times and which I've actually always liked! Still, now I can't help but agree that the remake is virtually overblown in every department by comparison with the original; the only thing I could find where it improved on the Silent version is the relationship between Julio and his German cousin, which is rather underdeveloped in Ingram's film (though in both versions, the two of them die together).The large-scale production is truly impressive, with settings ranging from rural Argentina to the French aristocracy and the grimy battlefields of World War I - not to mention a striking vision of Hell, with a gigantic fire-breathing demon unleashing the somber and ominous titular figures. The cast is certainly efficient, though some of the familiar names actually only gained popularity years later (Alan Hale, Wallace Beery and Jean Hersholt): Rudolph Valentino was shot to super-stardom with his role of the gigolo who develops a conscience and gives his life for a country which is not even his (a miscast Glenn Ford was certainly no match for him in the remake!); the tango sequence is justly celebrated, but his performance is excellent throughout (again, this might very well constitute his best work). Needless to say, the female lead was played by Ingram's own wife Alice Terry; also worth mentioning is Nigel De Brulier as a gaunt and gloomy exiled Russian who 'sees' the Four Horsemen and predicts the extent of their havoc. Though quite slow-going, the plot is compelling and the handling vivid enough to withstand its hefty 134-minute duration; as a matter of fact, the film is probably the most notable epic 'family saga' since D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) which, obviously, had dealt with the American Civil War and its turbulent aftermath.I've watched 6 Rex Ingram films so far and, apparently, the only two surviving titles of his I've yet to catch up with are THE ARAB (1924) and THE GARDEN OF ALLAH (1927); this is possibly the finest of them, however, despite being the oldest - and I'm surprised it still hasn't made it to DVD (from Warners), ideally as a 2-Disc Set in order to include the Sound remake...