The disc: Bardelys the Magnificent

The details: In 1926, King Vidor was the best young director in Hollywood. Within one year, he had made The Big Parade, the landmark epic about World War I and the most successful silent film of all time, not to mention La Boheme, a beautifully shot adaptation with Lillian Gish and John Gilbert. So it always seemed a shame that his 1926 swashbuckler Bardelys the Magnificent, made for MGM and also starring Gilbert, was missing in action, apparently lost to posterity.

But lo and behold, a print turned up in France in 2006, and, duly restored, has just been released by Flicker Alley in tandem with another John Gilbert vehicle, Monte Cristo, an adaptation of the venerable Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

Bardelys the Magnificent turns out to be a gem — a lighthearted swashbucker with a stunningly erotic and beautiful love scene of Gilbert and Eleanor Boardman in a canoe underneath an endless bower of willow branches that caress the lovers as well as the camera. It’s a classic scene, but then the whole film is rapturously shot by William Daniels, with one complicated shot being ripped off by Hitchcock for Rear Window.

Gilbert was not really much of an action hero — he’s heavily doubled throughout — but he is bright, witty, and has just the right casually elegant and amused manner: more Errol Flynn than Douglas Fairbanks, but a great movie star all the same.

Bardelys the Magnificent may be the most surprising and welcome rediscovery of the year.
The Flicker Alley set comes with a half hour interview with Gilbert’s daughter, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, a still gallery, and an audio commentary for Bardelys.