AllMovie

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.