Scaramouche

Director: Rex Ingram

Overview

In Revolutionary France, a daring young man becomes a masked, Harlequin-like outlaw and undergoes assorted romantic complications in tussling with the foul aristocrat who murdered his close friend. This well-made silent mounting of the famous adventure story was remade with Stewart Granger in 1952.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/23/2009
UPC:	0883316168059
Original Release:	1923
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:03:00
Sales rank:	40,930

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Ramon Novarro	Andre-Louis Moreau
Alice Terry	Aline de Kercadiou
Lewis Stone	Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr
Lloyd Ingraham	Quintin de Kercadiou
Julia Swayne Gordon	Countess Therese de Plougastel
William Humphrey	The Chevalier de Chabrillone
Otto Matieson	Philippe de Vilmorin
George Siegmann	George Jacques Danton
Bowditch M. Turner	Le Chapelier,Le Chapelier
James A. Marcus	Challefau Binet,Challefau Binet
Edith Allen	Climene Binet
Lydia Yeamans Titus	Mme. Binet
John George	Polinchinelle
Nelson McDowell	Rhodomont
Fuerburg De Garcia	Maximilien Robespierre
Edwin Argus	Louis XVI
Roy Coulson	Jean Paul Murat
Willard Hall	The King's Lieutenant
Lorimer Johnston	Count Dupuye
Edward Connelly	Minister to the King
Howard Gaye	Viscount d'Albert
Carrie Ward	Mme. Benoit
Rose Dione	La Reuolte
Arthur Jasmine	Student of Rennes
Tom Kennedy	A Dragoon
Kalla Pasha	Keeper of the Paris Gate
Ed Coxen	Jacques
Louise Carver	Actor

Technical Credits

Willis Goldbeck

Rex Ingram	Producer
Willis Goldbeck	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

More a lushly romantic melodrama than a straight Fairbanksian swashbuckler, Rex Ingram's Scaramouche, from the sprawling 1921 novel by Rafael Sabatini, remains one of the most beautifully spectacular of silent epics despite the fact that both Sabatini and Ingram at times seem to have been overwhelmed by the weighty historical events surrounding the story; in addition to the expected presence of Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, a brief glimpse of a keenly interested Napoleon Bonaparte is thrown in for good measure in the person of second unit director Slavko Vorkapich. Metro and Ingram, aided by hordes of set and costume designers, made every penny spent show up on the screen and Scaramouche was probably one of the era's most vividly researched blockbusters. Every wig, every plush bonnet, and every haughtily placed beauty mark seem authentic and only once or twice does a bit of typical Southern California landscape encroach on the realistic mise-en-scene. Ramon Novarro, who became a major star in the title-role, is as stalwart as Sabatini could have hoped for and Lewis Stone delivers a modulated performance as his aristocratic adversary. As the anguished Aline, Alice Terry, the director's wife, is little more than window dressing, but a huge cast paints scores of vivid minor portraits. It is of course all very grim with nary a smile in evidence but plenty of severed heads on revolutionary stakes. Beautifully restored and awarded a highly awaited television premiere in December of 2000, Scaramouche has been augmented with an appropriately lush score by Jeffrey Mark Silverman.