The Gaucho

The Gaucho (1927) : Brief Review -

An atypical Douglas Fairbanks lavish entertainer with a spiritual zest. Far from Allan Dwan's swashbuckler flicks, Douglas Fairbanks found himself on a spiritual path with this F. Richard Jones's directorial. Counting every Fairbanks trademark right, be it scale, comedy, or surroundings, The Gaucho goes a step ahead with devotional fervour, mainly suitable for believers. The film starts with a young girl falling down from a height and yet getting up alright after the holy power saves her and blesses her with special powers. The girl prays from her heart and does miracles, which convert the place into a sacred shrine, and the place is called the town of miracles. Far up in the north, there is a disreputable leader of a group of bandits, El Gaucho, who is off to invade the sacred shrine and take all the wealth. A local strongman, Ruiz, is also after the same, which puts these two strong men against each other. Gaucho enters the place with his gang, but soon realises that the lady is no regular human. He can feel something but can't express or understand what it is. How fate turns the game against him and how he acknowledges the spiritual path are all you get to see in the film. Like I said, it's an atypical Fairbanks entertainer, so you might miss some of the trademark shots, but not much. He delivers enough for his audience; it's just a little different this time. Lupe Vélez looks beautiful as a Holy Girl, and not even for a moment did she look fake. Nigel De Brulier, Charles Stevens, and Gustav von Seyffertitz were okay, while Albert MacQuarrie left a better impact without showing his face (except once). The F. Richard Jones' movie has drama, comedy, action, and a spiritual message, and that's more than what you'd expect, I guess. "Just follow these; you need no rules."

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

Combining the familiar Douglas Fairbanks action scenes with some unexpected material, "The Gaucho" is interesting and pretty good. It might be just a cut below Fairbanks's very best movies, but it has more than enough to satisfy most silent movie fans. The story is involved, and it features some creative turns, while the production is resourceful and quite good for the most part.

Fairbanks's character here is not quite the same as in his usual roles. While the story does give him plenty of action and adventure sequences, his character is not nearly as likable as most of the ones that he played. The way that "The Gaucho" treats the other characters is not at all what you would have expected from his other movies - normally, even when his character is an outlaw in the eyes of the authorities, you get the feeling that you'd have nothing to fear from him unless you deserved it. Not so here.

That does make the character interesting. As with Fairbanks's usual roles, he seeks justice and respect, but unlike most of the others, he also needs redemption in a much deeper sense. And that fits in well with the other unusual aspect of the movie, which is established at the very beginning with the founding of the miraculous shrine. It introduces a supernatural or quasi-religious dimension that is not at all part of movies like "The Black Pirate" or "The Three Musketeers". Yet, for all that it requires a suspension of disbelief, it works pretty well as part of the overall story.

The detailed and sometimes impressive settings, along with the supporting cast, also help out. Lupe Velez has plenty of energy, Gustav von Seyffertitz is a suitable villain, and it's enjoyable to see Mary Pickford's brief appearance. Overall, it's pretty good, despite varying in some respects from time-tested formulas.

As Douglas Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance has noted, "The Gaucho" is different from the action star's swashbucklers he'd been making since "The Mark of Zorro" (1920), citing the film's shift from the prior ones' boyish adventurism to more mature themes of sexuality and spirituality. Once again, Doug, this time as the Gaucho, saves a community from a dastardly villain, but this storyline becomes secondary to his religious conversion. Initially, the Gaucho isn't the perfect hero, either, although Doug still seems to perform stunts effortlessly (thanks in part to undercranking the camera and some quick, even sometimes choppy, editing).

And, this time, the girl pursues and tries to rescue him. Lupe Velez, as the easily-jealous, not damsel-y at all Mountain Girl, matches and sometimes exceeds Doug's exuberance. At one point, she tackles a guy and beats him up, and she likewise experiences a religious conversion. Usually, these type of religious pictures, complete with faith healing, a magical fountain and superimposed Virgin Marys would bore the hell out of me. I shudder at the thought of a film where the Girl of the Shrine, with her vacant expressions-supposedly alluding to spiritual superiority-were the protagonist.

But, Doug exudes charisma, his smile is contagious, and the religion, at least, slows his rollicking down for a moment. Otherwise, the guy is non-stop motion; he only sits down to briefly strike a pose and a match for his also-fervent cigarette smoking. Plus, The Gaucho does include the usual fare of Doug as the hero of the oppressed, defeater of dastardly villains. There's no sword fighting, but he does use a whip, performs some horse riding tricks, jumps all over the place and uses his wits to overcome large armies, including the climactic cattle stampede. The sets are also grand, per usual. Doug and his merry band of gauchos even help move one of them.

This is typical 20's Fairbanks, when he was making his grand epic swashbucklers, with typical over-complicated plots. The character reminds me of the first Zorro, but this guy is harder, and nastier (even after his miraculous reform). Fairbanks was also in his mid-forties when he made it, which explains his fined-down, but still very buff, appearance.

The plot is a mythical Argentina (with a tango thrown in to define the place, but it could take place anywhere, including Zorro's Early California. Fairbanks does wear an exotic costume, though.

Lupe Velez' Mountain Girl is the real departure. She is feisty, for one, and swashes every bit of buckle that Fairbanks does. These sort of characters are usually the one who DOESN'T get her man; here, it is with great satisfaction that she does--a woman ahead of her times!

Producer Douglas Fairbanks was getting tired playing the same chaste character who not only respected women in an honorable way, but was barely close enough to his love interests to plant a kiss. All that changed in his November 1927 "The Gaucho."

Maybe it was for the fact, as a pallbearer for cinema's male sex symbol, Rudolph Valentino, and witnessing the female hysteria of the actor's sudden death, Fairbanks realized there was a void for a Latin lover on the screen. Soon after the near-riots on the streets surrounding Valentino's coffin, he sat down and wrote the scenario for "The Gaucho," set in the mountains of Argentina. His character, The Gaucho, goes after women with abandon, especially with The Mountain Girl (Lupe Velez). He even dances a provocative tango number with Velez, establishing a physical presence with the opposite sex never witnessed in a Fairbanks' movie before.

Of course, Fairbanks realized he couldn't disappoint his legion of fans by portraying a libidinous character throughout his adventurous motion picture. "The Gaucho" turns on its heels when he becomes infected by some unnamed disease (most likely leprosy). Once he takes his health seriously, he goes to the City of the Miracle, named after an event from a woman's miraculous survival of a fall from a nearby cliff. Fairbanks' wife in real life, Mary Pickford, plays the Madonna, who pays a visit to the city.

"The Gaucho" was directed by F. Richard Jones, the same person who brought back to Hollywood Mabel Normand, who was battling drug addiction for three years. He also worked with Stan Lauren on 19 films before his pairing with Oliver Hardy. Laurel credited Jones with teaching him everything he learned about cinematic comedy. Jones later directed Ronald Coleman in 1929's "Bulldog Drummond" in his first talkie.

For The Mountain Girl role, Fairbanks auditioned several soon-to-be famous young actresses, including Myrna Loy, Fay Wray and Loretta Young. He was especially impressed with Lupe Velez, his love interest in "The Gaucho." The movie gave the actress, a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer, visibility after appearing in just a couple of Hal Roach shorts, including "Sailors, Beware!" with Laurel and Hardy. Her private life lived up to her nickname "The Mexican Spitfire," including fiery relationships with Gary Cooper, Johnny Weissmuller, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable, among others.

Fairbanks himself was experiencing quite a year in 1927. He was one of the first to imprint his hands and feet into cement next to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Mel Brooks in his 1974 black comedy 'Blazing Saddles" has one of his characters say after spotting the actor's mold, "How did he do such fantastic stunts ... with such little feet?" The members of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences also voted him to be the first president of that organization. "The Gaucho" was released one month after Hollywood's first talkie "The Jazz Singer." The Latino-flavored movie proved to be Fairbanks' last fully-silent movie; his next one, 1928's "The Iron Mask" contained a musical and sound effects track along with two short speeches by Fairbanks.