The contrast struck everyone's sense of humor and even Jack has to laugh at his own clumsiness."Ĭlarence Brown, who had directed Valentino in The Eagle, was brought in to assist official director George Hill. Gilbert "leapt about like a goat with a bee in its ear (for close shots), while his double, a famed performer from the Russian ballet, leapt like a graceful antelope across mountain peaks. According to Frances Marion, the film's scenarist, Gilbert was also doubled in the lively folk-dance sequence. Gilbert plays his part with swashbuckling flair, charging into battle on horseback with flashing eyes and a hearty smile, though unlike action hero Douglas Fairbanks, Gilbert leaves the most challenging stunts to stand-ins and trick riders. Clearly a conflict is brewing, but first Lukashka and his father have the angry Turks to deal with. He chooses Maryana, of course, "the least unsightly of her tribe," while Lukashka is off to battle the Turks. Nils Asther co-stars as a Russian Prince who arrives with orders to marry a village girl to strengthen the authority of the Czar, "the little father in Moscow," as he's known to the Cossacks. The film reunites Gilbert with his The Big Parade co-star Renée Adorée, who plays a similar role here as Maryana, the spunky village girl smitten with Lukashka, and her outfit - a peasant blouse and skirt - looks suspiciously like her French villager outfit from the earlier film. "hile it has its artificial vein," wrote New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall, the production "is sometimes quite impressive because of the earnest attention to the atmospheric detail." Money was lavished on costumes and location shooting (very little was shot in the studio) and a spectacular special effect involving an epic landslide across a mountain path. MGM built a massive Cossack village set in Laurel Canyon and bragged in press releases that they had brought 112 real-life Cossacks from Russia (they lived in the village during production). "The man who will not fight." After enduring ridicule and abuse, he finally turns and transforms into the fiercest warrior in a village of fighters who live to make war with the Turks. "The woman man," he's called by the village men. He was poised to take the mantle of screen heartthrob after the death of Rudolph Valentino, and MGM, which didn't always see eye to eye with the often outspoken and critical star, poured on the production value for The Cossacks, his follow-up to Love and his most expensive film to date.īased on a novel by Leo Tolstoy and set in a romantic fantasy of the barbarous central Russia, The Cossacks stars Gilbert as Lukashka, the educated, pacifist son of a bloodthirsty Cossack chieftain (Ernest Torrence). Under contract to MGM, the most glamorous studio in the world, he was a favorite of director King Vidor, who directed him in five pictures including the acclaimed The Big Parade (1925) and the swashbuckling costume adventure Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), and screen superstar Greta Garbo, who starred opposite him in Flesh and the Devil (1926) and Love (1927). John Gilbert had risen to the top ranks of Hollywood stars by 1928.
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