Les Quatre Cavaliers de l'Apocalypse

An extended family split up in France and Germany find themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield during World War I.

Often regarded as one of the first true anti-war films, it had a huge cultural impact and became the top-grossing film of 1921, beating out Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid". The film turned then-little-known actor Rudolph Valentino into a superstar and associated him with the image of the Latin Lover. The film also inspired a tango craze and such fashion fads as gaucho pants. The film was masterminded by June Mathis, who, with its success, became one of the most powerful women in Hollywood at the time.

Despite this -- the sales, the Valentino connection, and more... this is a little-known film and one that is rarely seen. Even being preserved by the Library of Congress (which is how it got on my to-see list) has not really raised its stature much. And yet, it is a minor silent epic that could be seen as the equal of anything DeMille or Griffith put out.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is an astonishing and spectacular film. I agree with most of the other comments, that this film is definitely a must-see, though I have reservations about some unevenness in the plotting. But the spectacle, the fire-and-brimstone imagery, and the excellent star-making performance by Valentino more than compensate. In many ways, it DOES tower above 99 percent of what Hollywood throws up today.

Rudolph Valentino's breakthrough role as Julio is in some ways his best, and it's a shame that this film isn't better known to day--it has yet to be released on DVD. (Is its being relatively unknown due to its being set during World War One, a war that was soon to be eclipsed by an even worse conflict?)

The story begins in Argentina on the plantation of the slightly grotesque but fascinating Madrigal the Centaur who, with the cruel partiality of Tennessee Williams' Big Daddy, openly favours his half French grandchildren to his half German ones (referring to them as "glass-eyed carrot topped sharks"). A few years later we see him carousing with his grandson Julio, the latter in full gaucho regalia, in a disreputable café (the setting of the rightfully famous tango sequence and where Valentino treats his female partner with that distinctive mixture of suaveness and brutality that characterized many of his later roles). The Great War intrudes on everyone's lives and both families, even though they have made their home in the new world feel drawn to take sides. With regard to the conflict itself, the film takes a anti-war if not entirely neutral stance (the French are generally honourable whereas the Germans behave like, well, sharks).

A large part of the film is devoted to the decline in fortunes of Madrigal's French son-in-law after he returns to France with his family, but the most memorable portions of this part of the film are Julio's wooing of Marguerite, the unhappy wife of a much older man and Julio's reluctant entry into the war. Initially he continues his wastrel life in Paris as an artist of sorts, as indifferent as Rhett Butler to the war around him, but eventually he finds himself drawn into the conflict, not because he is anymore convinced that the war is for a good cause as that, with the casualties mounting up every day, he simply feels too ashamed to continue living his soft life as a lounge lizard. The ending relies heavily on Dickensian coincidence but is devastating nonetheless.

A few quibbles—the stranger who appears occasionally to share his dire forebodings is not quite as annoying as the preachy meddler in Blood and Sand but is still somewhat intrusive. (On the other hand I liked the imagery of the four horsemen which was all the more effective for being used sparingly and must have been particularly impressive on the big screen). Also, the film contains an extremely cringe-inducing example of comic relief—Julio's mother, to cheer up her son in the trenches, sends him his monkey in a miniature soldier's uniform, complete with helmet, bringing to this modern viewer's mind Precious, the gin-swilling orangutan nurse of the whacked out NBC soap opera, Passions. However, these are minor objections and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is one of the best films of the silent era.

The image of the suave, rich Latino lover Rudolph Vanentino began with his lead role in March 1921's "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," produced by Metro Pictures. The Italian-born actor, however, was anything but rich when he signed with Metro. The studio was notoriously cheap when it came to paying second-tier actors, which Valentino was at the time.

The role of Julio Desnoyers in "Apocalypse" required not only for him to dress as an Argentina gaucho and a French World War One soldier, but also as a civilian. Metro lent him just the first two outfits, requiring the $350 per weekly-paid Valentino to dish out of his own pocket money for 25 custom-fitted suits. The clothes bill took the actor over a year to pay off, such was the enormity of the expense. The irony is the studio made a fortune on "Apocalypse," cashing in as the number one box office hit for 1921 as well as being the sixth most profitable silent movie ever made.

Metro executive/scriptwriter June Mathis was responsible for casting Valentino in the "Apocalypse" lead. The role immediately catapulted the actor into instant stardom. Mathis had seen him in 1919's 'Eyes of Youth,' a film just before Valentino's first lead in the low budget 'The Delicious Little Devil.' Mathis convinced Metro to purchase Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's 1916 anti-war novel, 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.' In the book, one of its characters describes upon seeing French soldiers marching to war as having visions in Biblical terms the currents state of the world in the four horsemen symbolizing the Plague (or Conquest), War, Famine, and Death. The plot of an extended Argentinean family, one side French, the other German, eventually confronting one another on the Western Front with fatal consequences, was seen by Hollywood studios as impossible to deliver it coherently to the screen. But Mathias adapted the book into a cohesive script, impressing Metro executives.

She knew how to showcase set-pieces that created lasting impressions on viewers. Mathis introduces Valentino in a nightclub setting, where he cuts in on a couple performing the tango. He then gracefully dances with the actress Beatrice Dominguez, setting off the public craze of doing the tango as well as wearing the gaucho outfit similar to Valentino's. The actor had worked as a taxi dancer in New York City when he first immigrated from Italy, and Mathis, knowing his background, drew up the scene especially for him even though it wasn't in the novel.

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.