The Mark of Zorro

The film that made Douglas Fairbanks a superstar — and invented the swashbuckler genre as we know it. Fairbanks plays Don Diego Vega, a foppish California aristocrat who secretly moonlights as the masked vigilante Zorro, defending the oppressed against a corrupt governor. The dual-identity structure (feckless nobleman by day, dashing hero by night) became the template for every superhero from Batman to Spider-Man, and Fairbanks attacks the role with irresistible athletic charisma: leaping over tables, carving his signature "Z" into walls, and grinning his way through swordfights with the pure joy of a man doing exactly what he was born to do. The film moves like lightning, and Fairbanks' physical prowess is genuinely astonishing. The prototype for a century of adventure cinema.