Bardelys the Magnificent

King Vidor, MGM, 1926, from Sabatini. John Gilbert as the Marquis de Bardelys, ordered by Louis XIII to win a marriage that is really a political trap, Eleanor Boardman the woman in the house. Silent, about ninety minutes. A swashbuckler Vidor shoots as exhaustion as much as flourish: a bet, a false name, a scaffold. John Wayne in a bit. Most of the film was lost for decades; the circulating File: is the recovered feature, not a trailer.