A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This first film rendition of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is a fine example of the early movies of substance. It is one of the early and best epic stories made during the silent era. It's worthy of preservation for that and for the style and methods of acting and filmmaking before the advent of the "talkies." This film seems to follow the story in the book closely. It is based on a best-selling novel of the same title by Vicente Ibanez, a Spanish author. But modern audiences are wont to compare this film with the later project of 1962 that starred Glenn Ford and a huge cast of notable actors. While the general story is the same, there are major differences in the screen versions. This film clearly is an anti-war movie. A family is torn apart by divided loyalties in a war, and the result is the death of the sons. Coming as it did just a few years after the end of World War I, it preaches strongly about the horrors of war. The foreboding character of Tchernoff (played by Nigel De Burlier) is a sort of harbinger of events to unfold, a prophet of doom, and a narrator within the story. That was a device that early Hollywood seemed to use on occasion in silent films, especially in longer dramatic films such as this. It would convey more details to the audience about what was taking place, as well as be a tool for persuasion as here. The advent of sound made the device obsolete. Today, it would be a distraction, but in this film it is a significant role. Another major difference between this and the 1962 film is in the main role. In the 1962 movie, Glenn Ford's Julio Desnoyers is the leading character. Not so in this first film. The main character here is Julio's father, Marcelo Desnoyers, played by Josef Swickard. Julio is a major character in this film, but only after that of his father. Rudolph Valentino plays Julio and clearly had his breakout to stardom with this role and film. Vincente Minnelli wanted the 1962 film set during WWI, as was this original and the novel. I doubt if that would have boosted the later film. The outcome would still have been the same – with Julio being killed. And, another problem would have been with the historical perception of World War I. It was the great war of the trenches – where most of the fighting took place and senseless waves of men were killed. But, this story takes place almost entirely in the time before the sides went to the trenches. Only toward the end do we see Julio and his cousin dying facing each other between the trenches. And his father and family lament his death at his grave site.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) was the biggest blockbuster of its day and among the highest-grossing films of the 1920s. Today, it is the most well-known film of the unsung director Rex Ingram, notable for being the film which launched the career of heartthrob Rudolph Valentino with the iconic tango sequence, and it is lauded as an early anti-war picture. But is it really deserving of the praise and attention it gets outside of historical significance? The film itself is unevenly paced, even stately. One feels every slow minute of its two hours. Ingram's direction is good though, and the visuals are stunning, as they always are in an Ingram production.The acting is uneven too. Valentino does well as Julio, going from a callow philanderer to a selfless war hero. His more restrained technique is a great contrast to the eye-bulging insanity he displays in his most well-known film, that masterpiece of kitsch, The Sheik (1921). However, I think his best performance was still ahead of him in The Eagle (1925), where he juggles drama, comedy, action, and sensual romance with ease.Alice Terry is not one of my favorite actresses, as I find she doesn't possess much charisma for a leading lady. This is probably one of her better performances, a restrained portrait of romantic yearning and a struggle between her happiness and the welfare of her much older husband.Though many have praised his performance, I found Joseph Swickard to be almost embarrassing as Valentino's father. He reacts to the atrocities around him with bulging eyes and cartoonish trembling. When he collapses while telling Julio to be ruthless in war, it comes across as unintentionally comedic rather than emotional.I also disagree with the notion that this is an anti-war picture. The depiction of the Germans in this film is as extreme as the cartoonish villainy of Erich von Stroheim's nurse-raping and child-murdering Prussian lieutenant in The Heart of Humanity (1918). While the characters regret the casualties of the war, the film suggests that the war had to happen because those evil Germans had to be stopped. The enemy are not treated like people; they're all wicked and that is definitely reminiscent of wartime propaganda, not a movie arguing for pacifism or the senselessness of war.Honestly, I wish Ingram were more remembered for his excellent production of Scaramouche (1923), which is even greater than the more celebrated 1953 remake. It also has better performances and pacing. Four Horsemen is a decent epic, but it isn't anymore memorable than any other by-the-numbers blockbuster Hollywood had and has cranked out before or after.

Valentino was in New York when he read in a trade paper that this movies was going to be made. He had already read the book and wanted to play the tango scenes. He had much experience with the Brazilian Tango when he made his living as a "Taxi Dancer" (A dancer that is picked up by a partner and paid for the time he dances with them - like a taxi) in New York. When he came back to Los Angeles to inquire about the tango scene in the movie, he learned that the casting office had been looking for him and already wanted him to play the part of Julio. He was so thrilled! Some people aren't aware that Valentino had come to Los Angeles in the first place because he wanted to work in agriculture. He was tired of taxi dancing and he also had been involved in a scandal in New York that ruined his reputation as a dancer. When he filled out an application to work at Metro studios, the question on the application asked "Why do you want to work in movies?" Valentino wrote the answer "Tired of ballroom dancing." Valentino loved to dance. Many times he kept a dancing job on the side before he was making big money. Then he still danced for fun.

This is surely a visually magnificent film to watch, especially if you get to see a copy of the tinted Photoplay restoration with a great score by Carl Davis.It strikes me however that few commentators here seem to bother about the very nasty portrayal of German people in this film. Despite its claims for universality, condemning WWI in general and not just a single nation (or class for that matter) involved in it, the image of the Germans is no different from the wartime propaganda huns as portrayed by Erich von Stroheim and others. They appear as arrogant, cold, ugly, brutal, grotesque, greedy, militaristic idiots, who even in peacetime in a civilian/family setting march in line and click their heels all the time. Julio's three cousins are portrayed as bespectacled, mischievously grinning jerks who obey their father's commands as if he was an army officer, even as children. They are even shown reading Nietzsche's Zarathustra and it's appraisals of the warrior man as if it was some kind of a bible. A race of villainous, natural born warmongers, it seems. Now this can hardly be the basis for an honest anti-war-movie. Compare this portrayal to the very different, more human and sympathetic image of German people in John Ford's FOUR SONS and of course ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Despite the now-campiness of these scenes in question I find them still quite offensive and hard to watch, even given that most silent movies made heavy use of strong contrasts and stereotyping. I guess in 1920 the anti-German resentments in the US were still very strong, which even caused D. W. Griffith to absurdly switch a German refugee family in post-war Berlin into a polish refugee family in ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL - as late as 1924! All this shift from anti-war-intentions to merely anti-German clichés somewhat betrays the "message" of the movie, which admittedly comes across quite rhetorical and pretentious in the first place, and is indeed one of the movie's weakest and most dated points. It just seems to be tagged onto the Valentino adultery romance story for mere dramatic effect (as in the vision of the Apocalyptic Horsemen and the final graveyard scene). But overall the war theme doesn't really stand in the center of the movie.