Vicente Blasco Ibanez Movies

This epic production was the last film that producer and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst produced for Paramount (after that, his production company, Cosmopolitan, went over to Goldwyn, which later merged with MGM). It was based on a novel by Vicenti Blasco Ibanez, who also wrote The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In addition to lavish sets by Joseph Urban, the cast and crew also filmed on-location in Paris and Monte Carlo. Russian Prince Lubimoff (Lionel Barrymore) thinks only of his wealth and his own gratification. After fighting a duel, he has to flee from the ire of the Czar, and Duchess Alicia (Alma Rubens) helps him to get out of the country. While he is staying at his villa in Monte Carlo, World War I breaks out, but neither he nor his associates even consider going to fight. Lubimoff, who won't even acknowledge that he is in love with Alicia, is incensed when he finds her embracing a young man. Without realizing that it is her 16-year-old son, Lubimoff and his friends form a group called "Enemies of Women." Because of the war, the feudal estates are lost, and Alicia's son dies just before he is about to enter into a duel. Lubimoff, who has finally realized that the world does not revolve around him, goes to fight and uses the money he has left to help the downtrodden. On the front lines, he meets Alicia, who has become a Red Cross nurse, and they are united. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Mae Murray's pictures were the ultimate in jazz-era extravagance. This one is based on the novel by Vicente Blasco Ibanez, the same author who wrote the book on which The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was based. Cecilie Brunner (Murray) was raised in a convent, but after her mother's death, she becomes a cynical vamp, who, like the mythical character Circe, brings men to their ruin. Because of the generosity of her unfortunate men friends, Cecilie is able to live well on Long Island. But then she falls in love with her next-door neighbor, Peter Van Martyn, a surgeon (James Kirkwood). Van Martyn disapproves of Cecilie's lifestyle and lets her know it. When he refuses to have anything to do with her, Cecilie parties even harder and winds up gambling away her home. Finally she realizes that Van Martyn was right and she returns to the convent. She is hit by a car and paralyzed while saving a child, but she miraculously regains the use of her legs when Van Martyn comes to her. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The Temptress was Greta Garbo's second American film, and while it may strike modern viewers as excessively melodramatic, Garbo is always worth watching. The star plays Elena, the wife of Monsieur Canterac (Lionel Barrymore) -- and the mistress of rich Parisian banker Monsieur Fontenoy (Marc MacDermott). When the banker's Argentine friend Robledo (Antonio Moreno), a dynamic young engineer, pays a visit to Paris, the fickle Elena immediately falls in love with him. Upon learning that Fontenoy has lost his fortune, Elena dumps him and returns to her husband, whereupon the banker kills himself. Evidently not content with ruining one life, Elena heads to Argentina and goes to work on Robledo, leading to a bloody whip duel between Robledo and his rival Manos Duros (Roy D'Arcy). Inevitably, Elena drives Robledo to perdition and indirectly causes the destruction of the magnificent dam upon which he has worked all his life. Banished from Argentina, she returns to Paris, where she spends the rest of her days as a seedy streetwalker. At least, that was the ending of the European version of The Temptress. The American version incredibly ends happily, five years after the above-described events, as Robledo and the reformed Elena triumphantly supervise the opening of his now-repaired dam! Initially, the film's director was Garbo's mentor-lover, the brilliant Mauritz Stiller, but he was replaced halfway through by the competent but uninspired Fred Niblo -- and the finished picture shows this division of interests all too clearly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Vincente Blasco Ibanez, Blood and Sand is the beautifully rendered story of the rise and fall of a young, cocksure Spanish bullfighter, played by Tyrone Power. Working his way slowly up the ladder to success, Power achieves fame when he is praised to skies by fatuous, fickle critic Laird Cregar. A country boy at heart, Power finds himself way over his head with sophisticates, and is soon torn between his pious and faithful wife Linda Darnell and sexy, mercenary Rita Hayworth. It is Darnell, however, who comforts Power after his final, fatal goring in the bull ring. The film's best scenes depict the curious combination of horror and fascination with which bullfighting aficionados treat this most barbaric of "sports." Blood and Sand was previously filmed in 1922 with Rudolph Valentino; a Valentino contemporary, Alla Nazimova, plays Power's mother in the remakes. Portions of this film turned up as stock footage in the 1945 Laurel and Hardy comedy The Bullfighters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There's a rumor that the MGM executive who thought that Glenn Ford could fill Rudolph Valentino's shoes in the 1962 remake of Valentino's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would have been arrested had it been sufficiently proven that he was competent to stand trial. The World War I setting of the original Blasco-Ibanez novel has been updated to World War II, but the basic plot remains the same. A well-to-do Argentinian family, rent asunder by the death of patriarch Lee J. Cobb, scatters to different European countries in the late 1930s. Before expiring, Cobb had warned his nephew Carl Boehm that the latter's allegiance to the Nazis would bring down the wrath of the titular Four Horsemen: War, Conquest, Famine and Death. Ford, Cobb's grandson, has promised to honor his grandfather's memory by thwarting the plans of Boehm. At the cost of his own life, Ford leads allied bombers to Boehm's Normandy headquarters. As unsuited as Glenn Ford was for his role, co-star Ingrid Thulin was even worse: her Swedish accent proved so impenetrable that MGM was obliged to have Angela Lansbury dub Ms. Thulin's voice. A major misfire for director Vincente Minnelli, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse was an expensive flop, forcing MGM to hope and pray that their upcoming epic How the West Was Won would save the studio's hindquarters (it did). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide