Don Juan

(Alan Crosland, US 1926, 112 min., 35mm)

Vitaphone at 90. John Barrymore was at his peak in 1926, both professionally—only a few years before, he had starred in a very successful stage production of Hamlet—and physically. At the time of Don Juan’s release, he was considered the greatest actor in America. The Vitaphone sound system was given an excellent launch with this lavish film, costarring a 22-year-old Mary Astor as the only woman who can reform Don Juan from his philandering ways.

“Mr. Barrymore leaps through the scenes of this production in a captivating manner, and sometimes the principal character and the story remind one of a Fairbanks film, and in the amorous moments one is impelled to think of Valentino.” – Mordaunt Hall, New York Times