Olcott is obviously a director of the old chain-the-camera-to-the-floor-and-use-an-iris-mask-on-the-lens school. His fondness for the mask not only robs us of the first sword-fight, but often seems both distracting and out of place.
As if these problems were not enough for the picture to shoulder, they have been compounded 300% by the extremely eccentric way the film has been re-edited from 10 reels to 7. For the first two-thirds of its present length, Monsieur Beaucaire is not a movie at all, but a parade - a seemingly endless parade of characters who are elaborately introduced via verbose inter-titles, take their self-important bows, and then disappear forever.
When we finally reach the Bath episodes and the story actually develops a smidgin of a plot and all six or seven hundred of the people not directly involved have departed the stage, the action actually becomes quite exciting. Maclaren and Shannon make a fine pair of villains, Doris Kenyon is great as the beauty with a heart of ice, and Rudy himself proves to be no mean swordsman.
Of course, by this time, most people have given up on the movie and are watching something else. Me, too! But being a thrifty Scot, I decided to take another look. I almost gave up again, but I was fascinated. I thought, when is this parade of overly verbose and utterly useless inter-titles ever going to stop? Answer: Bath, about 80 minutes in, leaving 34 minutes of exciting action. And would you believe, at this happy point the quality of the print improves enormously as well? It actually comes into nice sharp focus and you can actually see Rudy holding his own against a whole army of ruffians. Wonderful!
When we finally reach the Bath episodes and the story actually develops a smidgin of a plot and all six or seven hundred of the people not directly involved have departed the stage, the action actually becomes quite exciting. Maclaren and Shannon make a fine pair of villains, Doris Kenyon is great as the beauty with a heart of ice, and Rudy himself proves to be no mean swordsman.
Of course, by this time, most people have given up on the movie and are watching something else. Me, too! But being a thrifty Scot, I decided to take another look. I almost gave up again, but I was fascinated. I thought, when is this parade of overly verbose and utterly useless inter-titles ever going to stop? Answer: Bath, about 80 minutes in, leaving 34 minutes of exciting action. And would you believe, at this happy point the quality of the print improves enormously as well? It actually comes into nice sharp focus and you can actually see Rudy holding his own against a whole army of ruffians. Wonderful!