An entertaining prototype of all those '30s swashbucklers sees an athletic John Gilbert playing the title role of a womanising aristocrat who reluctantly enters into a wager that he can marry a glacial noblewoman within three months. Gilbert's a lot of fun and Eleanor Boardman is the charming subject of his wager (although Dorothy Farnum's screenplay never addresses the fact that Boardman and her family are firmly opposed to Bardelys's close friend, King Louis VIII). Worth watching for the stupendous action sequence in which Gilbert makes a spectacular escape from the gallows (and appears to be doing much of his own stuntwork).
Review of Bardelys the Magnificent
