Bardelys the Magnificent

In 17th century France, the Marquis de Bardelys, a charming womaniser and favourite of the king, lays a wager that he can wed the beautiful but prickly Roxalanne, the daughter of a landowner who opposes the court. Disguised as a wanted insurrectionist, he gains her trust – and then her love. But when Roxalanne sees through the masquerade, she betrays him to his pursuers and he is threatened with the gallows … In Bardelys the Magnificent, John Gilbert plays the role normally reserved for Douglas Fairbanks, breezily outdoing the latter’s already grand flourishes. King Vidor uses the chance of this, his only swashbuckler film, to poke gentle fun at the genre. The sword fights and chases end in a finale full of implausibility, with the camerawork itself becoming increasingly unbound as the action grows more turbulent. And yet Bardelys the Magnificent also contains one of the most romantic and best-known scenes in all of the director’s oeuvre, as the two lovers float languidly in a rowboat through a canopy of overhanging willows. Until the film, long thought lost, was found and then restored in 2007/2008, only a shorter clip of the scene existed, which Vidor used in Show People.