Alicia I love this movie so much

ShangLuda Admirable film.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Paularoc Based on the hugely popular late Victorian adventure novel by Anthong Hope, this silent version is very entertaining and moves along at a good pace, especially at the last half of the movie. King Rudolph V of Ruritania's coronation is but a day away. The King's brother, the Grand Duke "Black" Michael has a plan to keep the King away from the coronation and have himself crowned King instead. The King is not widely popular with the people and also is a drunkard. Michael drugs a bottle of wine that he sends to the King as a gift. The King gulps down the wine and falls into a stupor which will make it impossible for him to attend the coronation. As it happens, the King's devoted Chief of Staff, Colonel Sapt, meets a distant cousin of the King's, Rudolph Rassendyll, an English gentleman educated in Heidelberg. In appearance Rassendyll is the exact double of the King and Sapt convinces him to take the King's place at the coronation. While impersonating the King, Rassendyll falls in love with the King's intended, Princess Flavia and she with him. The adventure continues with murder, betrayal, kidnapping and a daring rescue of the King. Lewis Stone does an admirable job as Rassendyll. Oddly, in several scenes, Stone reminds one of Ronald Colman. Ramon Navarro sparkles as Michael's henchman Hentzau - he is conniving but also has flair. The actor playing Colonel Sapt is great and his scene late in the movie with Rassendyll and Princess Flavia is wonderfully done and quite touching. The ending of the movie avoids having what we think of as the typical Hollywood ending. Colonel Sapt has the last word when he says to Rassendyll "God does not always make the right men kings. You are the finest Elphberg of them all." What a fine 19th century sentiment that is. And probably small consolation to Rassendyll.

Michael Bo A retiring English country gentleman, Rassendyll, is mistaken for his distant cousin, King Rudolph of Ruritania. When the king is taken hostage by his jealous brother, Black Michael, Rassendyll agrees to act as the king in the coronation ceremony.It takes a long time for this version of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' to get moving. The first hour or so is stodgy and less than riveting film-making, and then it gradually picks up momentum, and the last half hour packs a decent punch, especially action-wise. But all in all, a rather more lackluster, even crude entertainment than I had expected after the exhilarating 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse', also by Rex Ingram.The script is largely at fault, with the scenes so disjointedly put together that it does not in long stretches make a lot of sense. It has the makings of some interesting psychological insights, but does not explore them. I would have made more - MUCH more - out of the fact that for a long while Black Michael seems a pretty decent fellow, genuinely in love with Antoinette and understandably preoccupied about leaving the fate of his country to his feeble-minded brother. But Ingram makes nothing of it and seems curiously uninspired.The youngish Lewis Stone is an earnest Rassendyll/Rudolph, and sort of holds his own in the climactic sword-fight with, among others, Ramon Novarro. And now we are getting somewhere. This is Novarro's film. He was hardly a star when it was made, and his role does not take up a lot of screen time, but Novarro eats up the scenery with his monocled, slick diabolism. "While you're unhung, Rentzau, hell lacks its master!", Stone says, and right he is. Novarro is pure evil, and a delight to watch.

DrMMGilchrist As a Ruritanian completist, I made it my mission to seek out this film on tape, and had to find it in the US. It was well worth the effort! There are some spoilers in my comments, but I find it hard to believe there can be anyone around who hasn't already seen at least one version of Hope's classic adventure story or read the books. My main points are comparisons between this version and the better-known talkies.The first half of this film is more effective than the 1937-1952 versions in opening out the action: it was scripted for cinema rather than being an adaptation of an 1890s stage version. So we start off with Rassendyll at home in England with his brother and sister-in-law, and are introduced to the plotters before we see him arrive in Ruritania - building the suspense. There are more exterior shots and landscapes - perhaps filched from travelogues of Central Europe. The Cathedral is Gothic, as described in the book, but, most strangely, the signs at the railway station are in Cyrillic script: given Ruritania's location and culture, Fraktur (German Black Letter) would have been more appropriate. But at least, unlike the talkies, the country has not been transplanted to the route of the Orient Express! The costumes are striking: late 19C interpreted with an early 1920s sensibility. They are therefore not historically accurate, but their slightly off-key style heightens the sense that the story is taking place in an imaginary realm, an alternative universe version of late 19C Europe. Some of the plot is changed in the second half. Unfortunately, we lose the fight in the summerhouse, and there is an utterly bizarre, positively Petrine plot involving a *dwarf would-be assassin*. The circumstances of the King's rescue and Michael's fate are also altered.The leads are excellent. Lewis Stone is almost the double of Ronald Colman, but (correctly) lighter-haired. Novarro is a sinister Rupert - more malevolent than Douglas Fairbanks jr. The Rassendyll/Flavia romantic scenes - especially their parting - are played less soppily than in some of the later versions. Some supporting characters omitted in other versions make their appearance: Helga, and old Marshal Strackenz. Sapt and Fritz look exactly as one imagines from the book - Sapt short and burly, more like Bismarck than the patrician C. Aubrey Smith. But the Six are reduced to Four (no von Lauengram or Krafstein). The casting of Johann (here abbreviated to Hans) as comedy relief seemed unnecessary and distracting. And I'm afraid to say that Michael's allegedly dangerous 'Black Cuirassiers' looked about as threatening as the doddery troops from 'Dad's Army'...I was glad to see some telling details from the book retained, such as the 'All is well' telegram, Michael dropping his helmet in the cathedral when he sees Rassendyll, & c. But as usual, Michael and Antoinette are played as older man/younger woman, instead of vice versa, and Stuart Holmes, as Michael, is on the plain and chunky side. (I still cannot imagine that he played Alec - the "handsome, horsey young buck" - in 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'...). However, Holmes turns in a creditable performance, more sympathetic than the character has been portrayed in the later versions. He is not a 2-D villain: his shift from specifying that the coup should be bloodless to plotting murder suggests an initially well-intentioned man sinking deeper into conspiracy as Rassendyll's involvement makes his plans unravel out of control. We see and hear, too, that he has supporters: although we do not see the public demonstration, there is a conversation between men in the Cathedral (I could not help but smile at the Michael-supporter being a Karl Liebknecht-lookalike!), and the narration tells us that the city is divided. There was little sense in the later versions that he was the more popular of the brothers.The tragic Barbara LaMarr is hauntingly exquisite as Antoinette, although much too young. As in all the film versions (and, indeed, the books) she is a far more interesting female lead than the sweet Princess Flavia (Alice Terry). The Antoinette/Michael relationship is established more convincingly, early in the film, than in the later versions. Her betrayal of him is played rather differently, as is his death. In this version, Rassendyll gets the three-cornered fight he had feared, versus Michael *and* Rupert! At least Jacob's Ladder is depicted correctly as a large drainpipe over the moat. But I still wish a version would be made which gave Antoinette her great tragic scene, pursuing Rupert like an avenging angel...However, the ending is closer to the book than that of the talkie versions, which wrongly (and quite unbelievably) implied that Rudolf V was going to become a reformed character: perhaps a result of the Hays Code's view of authority? I hope this version will get the DVD release it clearly deserves: it is a silent swashbuckling gem!

David Atfield Rex Ingram was one of the great visual stylists of the silent cinema, but his version of "The Prisoner of Zenda" is a little slow and ponderous and visually not as interesting as other Ingram films. But it's still pretty good with strong performances from Ingram's wife Alice Terry and the marvellous Lewis Stone. Although Ramon Novarro has top billing, Stone actually has the lead role - Ramon's role is a supporting one - an evil nobleman. But he is splendid - darkly handsome with a little beard and a monocle - and convincingly evil. It is interesting to see him before he became type-cast as the energetic sweet boy - he shows here that he had more range as an actor than he was allowed to show.The entire supporting cast is excellent and, although the sets are ordinary, the costumes are very fine. I expected more from Ingram, but this film is still worthwhile. Does anyone know if the Ingram - Novarro "Scaramouche" is still in existence?