The Iron Mask
1929 Directed by Allan Dwan
Synopsis
King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son - an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees the second son as a potential for revolution, and has him sent off to Spain to be raised in secret to ensure a peaceful future for France. Alas, keeping the secret means sending Constance, lover of D'Artagnan, off to a convent. D'Artagnan hears of this and rallies the Musketeers in a bid to rescue her. Unfortunately, Richelieu out-smarts the Musketeers and banishes them forever.
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Douglas Fairbanks' farewell to silent swashbucklers has one of the greatest openings to a film I have ever seen - including D'Artagnan's exquisite, playful courtship of Constance - and climaxes with an utterly staggering final scene. What comes between is often excellent, but sometimes undermined by serving Dumas' story too slavishly, with dense plotting at the expense of action and character drama. It's still a great movie, better in fact than The Three Musketeers, with many wonderful vignettes and a fittingly heavy human cost that is rare in Fairbanks' films.
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Douglas Fairbanks returns as the king's musketeer d'Artagnan in this the sequel to 1921's 'The Three Musketeers'. Also returning as Cardinal Richelieu is Nigel De Brulier. A partial talkie that until recently was shown as a silent.
The French Queen bears two sons but the Cardinal fearing for France if there are two heirs’ sends one baby to Spain, there to live out its life. But the Count De Rochefort kidnaps the child and hatches a conspiracy to replace the French king with his cruel brother. The Cardinal meanwhile disbands the Musketeers and charges d'Artagnan with protecting the Kings son.
Twenty years later De Rochefort puts his plans into action. Kidnapping the King and replacing him, the true king is… -
I made the mistake of watching the atrocious 1952 re-edit, which cut thirty minutes from the film and inexplicably had Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. narrate the entire story like a Disney nature documentary (and at moments when his narration ran too long to fit the shot being described, they simply ran the film backwards and forwards again to fill the time... dreadful). Once I realized my mistake, I watched the proper version, which is far from a masterpiece, but at least it's a real movie. It's a big step down from The Three Musketeers, though -- director Allan Dwan lacks Fred Niblo's ambition and facility with action sequences -- but there are a couple of impressive stunts, and Fairbanks's energy certainly…
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The film is based on a story about THE THREE MUSKETEERS, which is a story I detest. Luckily, the characters are so bare-bones here they aren't grating like in the stories, but the film seems to assume you know who they are and takes a lot of shortcuts. The last act feels super rushed. It's also one of those silent films that now seems to only exist with one of those annoying narration voiceovers. Watch The Mark of Zorro instead.
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Douglas Fairbanks' farewell to silent swashbucklers has one of the greatest openings to a film I have ever seen - including D'Artagnan's exquisite, playful courtship of Constance - and climaxes with an utterly staggering final scene. What comes between is often excellent, but sometimes undermined by serving Dumas' story too slavishly, with dense plotting at the expense of action and character drama. It's still a great movie, better in fact than The Three Musketeers, with many wonderful vignettes and a fittingly heavy human cost that is rare in Fairbanks' films.