This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

just watch it!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Many things have been written about "The Gaucho", lots of interpretations have been made from the very day it was released, and in the almost 90 years that have passed since then, it has of course been highly praised, but it's also been subject to unjust criticism in many ways; and in recent years the public's and the critics' interest in this so very UNIQUE movie seems to slowly fade away... So I think it's high time for us to rediscover this radiant jewel of early Hollywood, and to look at it in all its unusual spirit, with the innocence and enthusiasm the audience saw it back THEN; and at the same time discover that it's lost NOTHING of its freshness and dynamism - for it's one of those films that NEVER age.And from the very beginning of the movie we have to take into account that we're about to dive right into the world of Douglas Fairbanks, that great genius and pioneer of silent film days, whose huge all-round talent as actor, director, screenwriter and producer was equaled only by that of his best friend, Charlie Chaplin. And just like Chaplin, Doug Fairbanks had his VERY own ideas of motion pictures: they should be larger-than-life, include ALL aspects of reality, and merge them into something even more beautiful, filled with more action, drama, and at the SAME time love and fun than real life itself; and, of course, with an unbreakable optimism that leads to the literally most miraculous happy endings for everyone - not only for the 'good' ones, because there ARE no 'good' and 'bad' characters in "The Gaucho": just as in real life, everybody have got their flaws (even the protagonist himself), and everybody have got their good points.And so, be prepared for a UNIQUE mixture of drama, comedy, love story, and action adventure, that changes moods so quickly that you've got to adapt to Doug Fairbanks' own moody, restless personality in order to follow and understand, and most of all enjoy the movie. It seems to start out as one of those religious films about Madonnas and miracles that were so popular at the time, with a girl being miraculously saved after falling from a cliff by the Virgin Mary (played by Fairbanks' wife Mary Pickford!), and the place of the miracle soon becoming a place of pilgrimage. BUT - a few moments later, we find ourselves in a COMPLETELY different scenery: the world of the Gauchos, the outlaws of the Argentinian pampas, with their daring, carefree, exuberant lifestyle; the very example being of course their leader, Doug Fairbanks himself, simply named 'The Gaucho'.Everybody admires him, having the courage, the personality and the charm of a real leader; and naturally most of all the girls - like the cheeky young 'Mountain Girl' (Lupe Velez), with whom he soon starts a REAL whirlwind romance: he literally ties her to his body with his 'bolas' (the Gauchos' weapon, not unlike a lasso, but much more effective) to dance a HOT tango with her; they kiss and make up all the time, they quarrel, tease each other, and are crazy for each other - undoubtedly one of the most beautiful, entertaining, unusual romances that have ever been brought to the screen! Then the action part ensues, with Fairbanks' famous stunts, and he frees the prosperous 'City of the Miracle' from greedy usurper Ruiz, and even becomes friends with the Padre - without sharing his beliefs, however, because the only thing the Gaucho believes in is - the Gaucho. UNTIL that fateful moment when, after his jealous girl attacked the pious 'Girl of the Shrine' with a knife, unintentionally wounding his hand when he held her back - a victim of the 'Black Doom' (meaning leprosy) INTENTIONALLY infects him with the dreadful disease (because, earlier, he had suggested to him, being in this condition, to find a lonely spot and kill himself - that's what HE would do, he said)... Appalled and frightened, he understands what's happened to him - but he IS a man of principles: he says goodbye cheerfully to the 'Girl of the Shrine' and to his own 'Mountain Girl', and, just like he'd said, sets out into the woods with a gun intending to shoot himself.And there, the religious element sets in again; but not in the 'usual style' of some epic by De Mille or Griffith - no, with a strange, wonderful child-like faith: the 'Girl of the Shrine' finds him and tells him that if he believes, he can be saved; she asks him if he DOES believe, and he looks at her, puzzled, and then answers: 'I believe in YOU!' Then he asks her to teach him to pray - and HERE's the lesson: he's not supposed to become some religious fanatic, he's merely required to leave aside for once his over-developed self-confidence and learn to be HUMBLE and BEG for something... And it works: as soon as he places his hand in the healing water, it gets well - and he jumps around JUST like a little boy: 'I'm healed, I'm healed!!' And, after a few more heroic actions from both, he gets his 'Mountain Girl', the 'City of the Miracle' gets its peace and justice - a most CLASSIC Hollywood Happy Ending; but it gives us MUCH more than that to keep within us: because the TRUE message is the Gaucho's line: 'Yesterday was yesterday. Today is today. There's no tomorrow until it's today.' A great, everlasting message for one of the very GREATEST movies ever made.

Unusual but beautifully made and typically enjoyable Douglas Fairbanks vehicle, which finds the star at his most roguish (while still being his dashing and athletic self); with the Argentine pampas for backdrop, the film – whose full official title is DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS AS THE GAUCHO – can be considered a semi-Western. The narrative encompasses romance (supplied by fiery Lupe Velez), religion (via the presence of a miraculous shrine overseen by a saintly shepherdess – we even get a couple of visions of the Madonna herself, played by Fairbanks' own equally popular actress wife, Mary Pickford!) as well as more characteristic action (in the form of The Gaucho's opposition to the rule of tyrannical Gustav von Seyffertitz). A subplot which ties in with the element of faith sees the hero being deliberately contaminated by a carrier of "The Black Doom" whom he had previously slighted, though both are eventually cured. Fairbanks' trademark pioneering spirit in the technical department is also well in evidence here – with matte paintings giving the illusion of a truly elaborate visual design, reversed film for one particularly showy leap by the star onto his faithful steed, and even the wholesale horse-driven transportation of a house at one point!

"The Gaucho" (1927) by F.Richard Jones putting in scene Douglas Fairbanks it was at the time a kind of almost ballet movie, concerning countryside landscapes in Argentine with cattle and horses. Indeed what it was possible also to a busy adventurer like his character brought another time to audience, in such a character of a smiling enraged gentleman. Saving people in local unrest by his phlegmatic pragmatism in the fight for making a quite still concealed justice of land in relationship with sacred ritual of local mingled faith. Instinctively for a better increase of cohabitation with less weaponry and more physical agility of the body on his horse, fighting as a masked creole friend of the poor's, whose sentimentalism was as a kind of internationalism, somewhat displaced from a social liberation struggle like that. Beyond his own measure and compassion, turning out the unrest at his own capacity and getting things to his wife, as though her lover apparently change his mind stopping it, but finally accepted by him after the social turmoil. It seems to be a silent movie already displaced from its stillness as guarantee of something of new coming soon, except the hat of Fairbanks which inspires confidence on the pampas as a kind of brave and peace maker, before it had happened too so briefly as possible and soon or later. What does represent the personality of this character in that movie ? Something of the enthusiasm lost for a while with the transition from the silent pictures, a kind of masked temperament reckoned by everyone of the time as righteous integrity, from a horseman who likes being an intruder on the social turmoil, but from whom the diplomatic intervention is not out of the struggle for free speech concerning peasant local religiosity. As if it was a kind of such a specific and well represented low power against any oligarchy on the pampas, told from the time of the roots linking to such a privileged inhabitants not far away of the still recent influence of colonization from abroad. Even if populism at its beginning also it is as bringing a necessary impulse in the intoxicated souls, as strength for smashing support in civil latent unrest for a small war between contenders of both sides. For all this he is a popular figure in the middle of iconoclasts, representing the request with good conviction for maybe the impossible neutrality, that couldn't facing disturbing spirits like the soul of an impossible twin liberator for any quarrel sharing the way of means of wealth. He represents the prefiguration of the symbolic new life for the countryside, nowhere in South America with the myth of the coming industrialism from North America. He is the gate of the foreigner owner that took the empathy of the local people, as liberal exception still half colonized and masterminded by brotherhood at the place of paternalism. That's it. Fancy as outlooked caricature of such a diversified single hero in his sensibleness and mystery fashion, from the moment that took the weakness of obscurantism and whose own fearless is fighting the most powerful than himself in his melancholy.

This is typical 20's Fairbanks, when he was making his grand epic swashbucklers, with typical over-complicated plots. The character reminds me of the first Zorro, but this guy is harder, and nastier (even after his miraculous reform). Fairbanks was also in his mid-forties when he made it, which explains his fined-down, but still very buff, appearance.The plot is a mythical Argentina (with a tango thrown in to define the place, but it could take place anywhere, including Zorro's Early California. Fairbanks does wear an exotic costume, though.Lupe Velez' Mountain Girl is the real departure. She is feisty, for one, and swashes every bit of buckle that Fairbanks does. These sort of characters are usually the one who DOESN'T get her man; here, it is with great satisfaction that she does--a woman ahead of her times!