After making four relatively minor films as sound movies, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. concluded his career with a good film. No ROBIN HOOD or THE BLACK PIRATE perhaps, but THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN managed to give a coda to his career as screen presence, by giving him the role of a legendary lover who discovers that age catches up with legends.
Made in England by Alexander Korda, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN was one of a series of "historical" dramas and biographies (here a pseudo-biography) by Korda that would include Henry VIII, Rembrandt, and Catherine the Great as subjects. As a result, the cast includes such Korda familiar faces as his wife Merle Oberon and Binnie Barnes.
Fairbanks' Don Juan is over fifty, but still exuberant, and still a master of seduction. However his wise valet Leporello (Melville Cooper in a nicely phrased performance) is getting tired (after decades of such work) of helping extricate his master from various sexual escapades. Perhaps they were more tolerable when Juan was twenty or thirty, or even forty, but a middle-aged man of fifty should settle down.
Years earlier Juan had married (legally) Dona Dolores (Benita Hume - later, in real life, Mrs. Ronald Colman). Hume wants him to come to his senses and return to her - she's aware he is not the romantic hero of the age anymore. Cooper is aware of this and soon is working with Hume to manipulate Fairbanks into growing up.
A chance helps them. A young fool is going around Seville pretending to be Juan, and steals into the house of Juan to learn the master's secrets. He also steals some personal items of Juan, and soon afterward is caught in the house of a young married woman by her husband (Gibson Gowland - "McTeague" in Von Stroheim's GREED), who reluctantly challenges him to a duel. Gowland is reluctant because Don Juan's reputation is a class A fencer. However the impostor is not as good, and is run through. News spreads that the great lover has been finally killed by a cuckolded husband. Gowland's popularity shoots up, and the women in Seville go into morning.
Fairbanks is initially going to straighten out the issue, but is "convinced" by Cooper to take advantage of it to get away and have a vacation. He decides to do that, pretending he is a retired sea captain and going to a sea port. Here he soon is pursuing his old interests, but he finds that the young woman he "attracted" wants him to assist her in contacting her real boyfriend (she thinks Fairbanks is a wise old man who can help her). Similarly, when he approaches Binnie Barnes, the maid in the inn, she's willing - if he buys her really nice presents of jewelry (he gives her some in disgust!). The inn-keeper (about five or six years older than Fairbanks) offers him a chance for marriage. He is now thoroughly tired of the vacation, and returns home.
But everyone thinks he is dead - he can't convince anyone he is not dead. He sees a play about his life in a theater and interrupts (a situation like that of Baron Von Munchausen in the 1989 movie). But everyone there, including Gowland and Oberon - a former lover - refuse to acknowledge this old man as the great dead man. He is laughed off the stage. But Cooper is there to guide him to Hume, and the film ends with Fairbanks realizing that Hume expects him to be as passionate and expert as a lover - and will never laugh at him like the others. Fairbanks happily accepts the final situation with relief.
It was a marvelous performance, showing Douglas Fairbanks at his best, in all but youthful vigor. It gave him a final film of stature to end with. Maybe he could have continued into good character roles, but as he to end somewhere, this film was a good place to end.
Made in England by Alexander Korda, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN was one of a series of "historical" dramas and biographies (here a pseudo-biography) by Korda that would include Henry VIII, Rembrandt, and Catherine the Great as subjects. As a result, the cast includes such Korda familiar faces as his wife Merle Oberon and Binnie Barnes.
Fairbanks' Don Juan is over fifty, but still exuberant, and still a master of seduction. However his wise valet Leporello (Melville Cooper in a nicely phrased performance) is getting tired (after decades of such work) of helping extricate his master from various sexual escapades. Perhaps they were more tolerable when Juan was twenty or thirty, or even forty, but a middle-aged man of fifty should settle down.
Years earlier Juan had married (legally) Dona Dolores (Benita Hume - later, in real life, Mrs. Ronald Colman). Hume wants him to come to his senses and return to her - she's aware he is not the romantic hero of the age anymore. Cooper is aware of this and soon is working with Hume to manipulate Fairbanks into growing up.
A chance helps them. A young fool is going around Seville pretending to be Juan, and steals into the house of Juan to learn the master's secrets. He also steals some personal items of Juan, and soon afterward is caught in the house of a young married woman by her husband (Gibson Gowland - "McTeague" in Von Stroheim's GREED), who reluctantly challenges him to a duel. Gowland is reluctant because Don Juan's reputation is a class A fencer. However the impostor is not as good, and is run through. News spreads that the great lover has been finally killed by a cuckolded husband. Gowland's popularity shoots up, and the women in Seville go into morning.
Fairbanks is initially going to straighten out the issue, but is "convinced" by Cooper to take advantage of it to get away and have a vacation. He decides to do that, pretending he is a retired sea captain and going to a sea port. Here he soon is pursuing his old interests, but he finds that the young woman he "attracted" wants him to assist her in contacting her real boyfriend (she thinks Fairbanks is a wise old man who can help her). Similarly, when he approaches Binnie Barnes, the maid in the inn, she's willing - if he buys her really nice presents of jewelry (he gives her some in disgust!). The inn-keeper (about five or six years older than Fairbanks) offers him a chance for marriage. He is now thoroughly tired of the vacation, and returns home.
But everyone thinks he is dead - he can't convince anyone he is not dead. He sees a play about his life in a theater and interrupts (a situation like that of Baron Von Munchausen in the 1989 movie). But everyone there, including Gowland and Oberon - a former lover - refuse to acknowledge this old man as the great dead man. He is laughed off the stage. But Cooper is there to guide him to Hume, and the film ends with Fairbanks realizing that Hume expects him to be as passionate and expert as a lover - and will never laugh at him like the others. Fairbanks happily accepts the final situation with relief.
It was a marvelous performance, showing Douglas Fairbanks at his best, in all but youthful vigor. It gave him a final film of stature to end with. Maybe he could have continued into good character roles, but as he to end somewhere, this film was a good place to end.