The Iron Mask
London Film Festival
****

As the great Douglas Fairbanks staggers off to die with a knife in his back at the end of The Iron Mask, the last of Channel 4's remarkable series of restored silents, it was impossible not to think that a rather clever gesture was intended. Perhaps it wasn't. But if other finance can't be found, we will have lost another opportunity to see a whole chunk of cinema history in the best of circumstances and with specially commissioned scores attached. Was there another sponsor in the house at Sadler's Wells? One hopes so.

Nobody could accuse Fairbanks's 1929 farewell to the silent swashbuckler of being in the same league as predecessors such as Murnau's Sunrise and Nosferatu, Wellman's Wings or Von Stroheim's The Wedding March. But much enlivened by one of Carl Davis's least portentous and most flexible scores, well played by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the old warhorse comes up remarkably freshly. It's tightly plotted, handsomely mounted and full of pace and verve. It wasn't a success in its day because audiences were besotted by the imminent coming of sound. But it certainly was with its audiences this time round.

Fairbanks was over 45 and a bit puffy when he made The Iron Mask. His usual, deftly timed acrobatics were restricted. What's more his two spoken prologues were pretty awful, as if he was trying to reach the back of the stalls through a megaphone. But as Dumas's D'Artagnan, a part he was surely born to play, you could still see a bit of his balletic grace, and a lot of his wit, modesty and good humour. "Pictures were made for him", his director Allan Dwan, who claimed to have made over a 1,000 movies himself, once remarked. He should have said silent pictures, but what a great star of those he was.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible