The Gaucho at the Egyptian

Douglas Fairbanks’ remarkable swashbuckling adventure fantasy THE GAUCHO (1927) screens with a spotlight on the production design by Carl Oscar Borg.

“THE GAUCHO is unique among Fairbanks’ swashbuckler films in both tone and look – it is a darker fantasy, tragic yet somehow more rugged and realistic,” says production designer John Muto, ADG Film Society Founder and Co-Director. “Much of the film takes place in a magnificent white city, set high in the Andes. The enormous set, built from scratch was totally the creation of supervising art director Carl Oscar Borg. The enormous, blocks long, multi-story city was designed specifically for Fairbanks to confound an entire army with his vigorous stunt work.”

Other wonderful sets include a rustic cafe where Fairbanks dances an erotic tango with Lupe Velez, the Mountain Girl, who lives in a very well-appointed cave below. Elsewhere in the film, Borg convincingly creates the illusion of enormous mountain vistas and vast plains on the back lot, through the use of glass shots and perspective miniatures.

Fairbanks, the producer of his own epics, was well aware that the sets of his highly physical adventures had to not only be beautiful, it also had to be designed and built specifically to accommodate the action that was his trademark. Another great American performer who often paid tribute to Fairbanks’ work was actor, dancer and director Gene Kelly. Kelly acknowledged THE GAUCHO as an inspiration for certain elements of THE PIRATE (1948). A clip reel featuring excerpts from Fairbanks’ swashbucklers, as well as Kelly’s work in THE PIRATE, THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1954), and SINGING IN THE RAIN (1952), will explore this relationship.

A panel discussion featuring Fairbanks expert, Professor John Tibbetts of the University of Kansas (author of Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century) and special guest Patricia Ward Kelly, widow and biographer of Gene Kelly, will explore the relationship of film design to dance and stunt choreography, as well as Douglas Fairbanks and Gene Kelly as filmmakers, and their influence on the evolution of American film. The panel will be moderated by John Muto.