Customer Reviews

Prisoner of Zenda

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The 1922 "Prisoner of Zenda" is surely one of the best silent films ever made. Its major actors knew better than to over-emote and it obviously had a very competent director in Rex Ingram. Even though the plot,costumes, and scenery are straight out of an operetta, the players mostly come off as natural, demonstrating that good acting was not something that somehow emerged with the advent of sound. Even Ramon Navarro as the villainous Rupert of Hentzau shows himself to be far more than just a pretty face as he turns his role into a droll, animated tour de force.

The picture begins in the manor house of Englishman Rudolph Rassendyll, the camera zeroing in on the extremely beautiful eyes of Lewis Stone, by now a 43-year-old stage veteran who, in most other respects, looks like a rather ordinary middle-aged man in trim physical condition. But, of course, there is nothing ordinary about Stone's histrionic talent and, besides, he has all the charm that made him so beloved as Judge Hardy about 15 years later in the "Andy Hardy" series. Rassendyll decides to attend the coronation of his cousin, Rudolph of Ruritania, [whose twin he could be] and finds his kinsman to be a dissipated mess. Lewis Stone plays both parts, needless to say. The weak king-to-be has an ambitious but evil brother, Duke Michael, who plots to seize the throne for himself and kill Rudolph in the process. On the eve before the coronation, the duke arranges for his brother to be drugged so that he will not be in any shape to attend the ceremony. Therefore, the king's loyalists persuade the British Rassendyll to take his place for a day and keep Michael from having his way.

The Ruritarian Rudolph has a beautiful fiancee played by the luminous Alice Terry. The couple do not have much use for one another but she is a popular princess who would serve to bolster Rudolph's own shaky position. However, Rassendyll and the lovely girl take to one another at once and, sensing an unexpected change in her intended, the princess no longer sees her role as future queen as a mere duty. Of course, the plot thickens and there is another female involved, played by the alluring but less natural actress, Barbara La Marr. Rudolph Rassendyll cannot go home to England after the coronation but must stay on in order to help rescue his endangered royal cousin. There is skull-duggery aplenty and sword-play, too. All make for a fascinating film and it is quite a revelation to see how effective a younger, doe-eyed version of old Judge Hardy is in the love scenes. Pretty sexy!
It is probably no accident that the actor who played the dual role in the next "Prisoner of Zenda", Ronald Colman, resembled Lewis Stone quite a lot.

The five-star review here must be for the Warner Brothers Archive Collection DVD of "The Prisoner of Zenda." If it were for the Grapevine Video release, I'm sure it would have mentioned the abysmal quality of the DVD. Grapevine's transfer to DVD was made from an extremely bad print of the film, with absolutely no attempt at restoration. Many of the title cards are so dark as to be unreadable; surely it would have been a simple matter to create new title cards for this release--unless the Grapevine people couldn't read them either. The contrast in one section of the film is so high that characters and objects are reduced to featureless blobs on the screen.

I agree completely with the other reviewer's comments on the acting and the cinematic qualities of the 1922 film. I'll be returning the Grapvine DVD, and I'm willing to try the Warner Brothers release, but in the meantime I'll stick with the 1937 Ronald Coleman version.