Several years ago I saw a 1921 film called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse while on vacation. It is legendary to film historians and others in the know. Think about the craze that Star Wars or the first Lord of the Rings created, and you'll sort of have the impact this Rex Ingram classic did in 1921. It is one of the first (if not the first) epic film. At over two and a half hours long, it is the longest silent film I have seen to date - and probably the best. The IMDB lists the budget at $800,000, but I have heard numbers as high as $1,000,000. In 1921, when the film industry was still regarded by many as a novelty or fad, that was a really big freaking deal.
Here is the IMDB plot summary (poor punctuation and all):
Madariaga is an Argentinian cattle baron with two daughters: one married a Frenchman, the other a German. Madariaga favors his French grandson, Julio, as his heir, but Julio is a wastrel and rake whose greatest achivement is tangoing well. When Madariaga dies, his fortune is split between his daughters. The German side of the family goes back to Berlin, while the French half moves to Paris, where Julio becomes a painter and falls in love with Marguerite, a married woman. When WWI explodes (and is described by the mystic Tchernoff as the coming Apocalypse), and Marguerite's husband is blinded, Julio decides he must join the army, and becomes a reformed character. But Death hasn't finished gathering his harvest yet and Julio must face his own cousin on the battlefield.
Oh, and if you've ever seen the famous tango scene with Rudolph Valentino, it is from this film.
The other day, I won an auction on eBay for a tape from the only VHS release of this film for $7.50 shipped. I have been searching for this film for about five or six years now, so I am really thrilled to finally be able to see it again soon and (even better) own it. I'll check and see if it is under public domain now, and
if it is, I may be willing to convert this to DVD and burn it for anyone interested (HA!).
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