An aging Don Juan (Douglas Fairbanks) returns to Seville with his servant (Melville Cooper) where he is threatened with jail by his loving wife Dolores (Benita Hume). He visits a few ladies, including a dancer, Antonita (Merle Oberon) and all the town is excited by his return. A young man pretending to be Don Juan is killed when found with a man’s wife and Don Juan takes this as his opportunity to escape his legend and relax by pretending to be dead. But he soon finds it less fun than he thought it would be to be a regular man.
The Private Life of Don Juan is not a Swashbuckler, but I list it with the genre as it is the end of a Swashbuckling legend, and a commentary on both the genre and on the end of legends. Douglas Fairbanks was the greatest Swashbuckling actor of the silent screen. He practically invented the genre. And his time was at an end. He didn’t make the switch to talkies—too old to play the action hero, and with a voice a bit too reedy to live up to expectations. After four failed attempts, he retired, but came back for one last hurrah (probably more if it had been the hit it should have been). Errol Flynn ended his era of big budget Swashbucklers with an aging Don Juan film and I said it was the perfect choice, but actually this is a far better end-of-career picture. Unlike Flynn’s there is no attempt at sword play and it is much more complete in deconstructing a legend.
As the film begins, Don Juan is not what he once was, but then he was never what his legend proclaimed. No one could be. His success with the ladies is now entirely due to his reputation. They want the fantasy and are willing to believe it in order to have it. And without that reputation, he is nothing but an ordinary man well past his prime.
The Private Life of Don Juan takes a few pokes at the people (or perhaps I should say audiences) who cling to the legends and swear their love to celebrities, but it also finds such legends important. The real target of the movie is those who would believe their own publicity. Fairbanks was mocking himself. Just as Don Juan was only important due to the legend, so Fairbanks only mattered for a brief time due to a beautiful lie, and he was replaceable (and would be replaced a year later by Flynn). This is a remarkably message-heavy film for being so light in tone over all. The Private Life of Don Juan is funny and never pretentious. Fairbanks is as good as he’d ever been and the army of beautiful women who slip in and out of the picture are delightful. This is no dirge. It’s about aging, but with a smile and a wink. Fairbanks couldn’t have gone out better.