Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer

Earning Flicker Alley a 2008 Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics, Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer—released to coincide with the publication of Jeffrey Vance's superb biography Douglas Fairbanks—is a five-disc, 11-film boxed set that pays dashing tribute to the first “supernova” star of silent action-adventure, a man who was both the screen's greatest swashbuckler and a cofounder of United Artists. Four films are offered from Fairbanks' breakthrough year in 1916—His Picture in the Papers, The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (now considered a cult favorite for its comic treatment of drug abuse), Flirting with Fate and The Matrimaniac—with Fairbanks trying out a variety of roles as he continued to hone his breezy image in contemporary comedies. By 1917, Fairbanks was already his own producer at Three Artcraft/Famous Players-Lasky Corp., and three of those films—Wild and Wooly (one of Fairbanks' personal favorites), the action-packed Reaching for the Moon, and the breathtaking A Modern Musketeer (Fairbanks' first collaboration with director Allan Dwan)—are included here, the last presented in a complete new restoration. After starting UA in 1919, Fairbanks starred in the psychoanalytic comedy When the Clouds Roll By (1919), the epic-scale comedy The Mollycoddle (1920), the landmark costume adventure The Mark of Zorro (1920), and the minor but still-amusing comedy The Nut (1921). All of the films, which have been digitally remastered from 35mm or original-negative prints, feature music scores created for this set by several of today's foremost silent-film music composers. DVD extras include audio commentary on A Modern Musketeer, a gallery of rare stills from Fairbanks' personal collection, and a 30-page illustrated booklet. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (J. Shannon)