Don Juan is a 1926 film directed by Alan Crosland.
It is one of many adaptations of the original 17th century tale of Don Juan, the notorious lover. In this one the story starts with Don Juan as a boy. Juan's father Don Jose (John Barrymore) catches his wife Donna Isobel (Juan's mother) in the arms of a lover. Don Jose has the lover walled up in the castle, "Cask-of-Amontillado" style, and throws his wife out. Later Don Jose is murdered by a jealous lover, and with his dying words tells his son to take pleasure from women, but never to give them love.
Cut forward to Don Juan as an adult (also played by John Barrymore), who has taken his father's advice, and is so busy as a seducer of women that sometimes he has to keep hourly schedules. It's the late 15th century, and The Borgias rule in Rome. Lucrezia Borgia sets her sights on Don Juan as a conquest—but Don Juan may be finally falling in love, with Adriana della Varnese (Mary Astor in one of her first starring roles), daughter of a house that rivals the Borgias.
Myrna Loy has a bit part as a Borgia lady-in-waiting. This film is famous for being the first ever feature film to be played with a synchronized soundtrack. That soundtrack was only sound effects and a score by the New York Philharmonic, but the success of the Vitaphone soundtrack system encouraged Warner Brothers to push on with songs and spoken dialogue in 1927's The Jazz Singer.
Tropes:
- Bookcase Passage: A visitor, Duke Margoni, needs to flee. Don Juan pushes on a wall, which spins on a center axis, allowing the duke to escape into the next room. It also brings out Margoni's wife, who was hiding from him on the opposite site of the wall.
- Buried Alive: The fate of Isobel's lover, walled up in Don Jose's castle.
- The Casanova: In one scene Don Juan has three different women milling around his apartment, all wanting his attention. He gets a letter from another lover, telling him her husband is out of town, and enclosing a ring, which he puts in a box full of rings.
- Dastardly Whiplash: Count Giano, a creep and ally of the Borgias, literally strokes his mustache as he leers at lovely young Adriana.
- Fat Best Friend: Pedrillo, who seems to be a valet and babe-wrangler for Don Juan, is a fat comic relief character.
- Grapes of Luxury: One of the Bacchus dancers at Giano's debauched wedding party runs over to him with a bunch of grapes, sits on his lap, eats a couple and then feeds them to him.
- Ladykiller in Love: Don Juan, who beds so many women that he has to keep schedules on paper, falls in love with Adriana.
- Little People Are Surreal: For no real reason, the servant at the mansion who tells Don Jose about Isobel's infidelity is played by a dwarf. A title card muses about "Souls curiously warped with hate."
- A Minor Kidroduction: The opening sequence has Don Juan as a boy, witnessing the disastrous implosion of his parents' marriage, before cutting forward some 20 years to find Don Juan as a womanizing adult in Rome.
- Mischief-Making Monkey: A monkey snatches a slip hanging from a window, which forces a half-naked woman, one of Don Juan's lovers, to lean out and grab it.
- Riding into the Sunset: Literally. After escaping the Borgia dragoons, Juan and Adriana, on the same horse, ride off into the setting sun, to the west and Spain.
- Right Behind Me: Don Juan has gotten rid of three different women by telling them Duke Margoni is on the way—Margoni is husband to one, uncle to another, and an "admirer" of the third. He then starts joking about how Margoni is "a pompous old ass", only to find a pissed-off Duke Margoni right behind him.
- Scarpia Ultimatum: The Borgias arrest della Varnese and promise to execute him—but they'll spare him if Adriana marries Count Giano, their ally. Adriana agrees, but ultimately Don Juan rescues her.
- Too Important to Walk: A random moment has one of Don Juan's girlfriends brought to his house in a litter. and if that isn't enough to mark her out as important, she's also named "Imperia."
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: A jealous concubine pulls a knife out of her Compartment and fatally stabs Don Jose in the chest.
