Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925)

Director: Donald Crisp
Writer: Jack Cunningham, based on the novel Don Q’s Love Story by K. & Hesketh Prichard
Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Astor, Jack McDonald and Donald Crisp

Index: That's a Wrap!

It’s a long while since I’ve seen the original The Mark of Zorro, a Douglas Fairbanks vehicle based on the first appearance of Zorro, a short story called The Curse of Capistrano, published a single year earlier. Zorro came quickly to film.

However, this is only a sequel in name, as it was based on a Don Q novel instead, a Spanish character called Don Quebranta Huesos, who first appeared in 1904, so predated Zorro. Don Q’s Love Story was the first Don Q novel after a couple of short story collections, all written by a mother and son writing team.

Here, due to Hollywood story manipulation, Don Quebranta Huesos becomes Don Cesar de Vega, son of Don Diego de Vega, now formally outed as Zorro. He’s a Californian of Spanish blood, though almost the entire story unfolds in Spain, with young Don Cesar visiting “for a period of travel and study”, as per a tradition for eldest de Vega sons.

Even those who haven’t seen a Zorro movie or read a Zorro story know the gist. He’s a hero from the upper classes who puts on a mask to fight for the poor and downtrodden, literally a social justice warrior. His signature move is to carve a Z into the face or body of his enemy, as a warning to those who might see it.

Don Q, Son of Zorro may swash a lot of buckles and it may have been popular with the public, as the joint sixth highest grossing film of the year, with Stella Dallas, but it doesn’t do any of that. There’s no social justice to be found here.

Instead it’s very much a story of two halves.

The first features Don Cesar having a whale of a time in Spain. He performs tricks with his Californian whip, which would land Fairbanks a job at any Renaissance Festival. He boasts about his father, who’s the best at pretty much everything in America. He might not be wrong there, but it’s tiring nonetheless. And, after he climbs over a wall to escape a crowd, he finds and outrageously courts a young lady named Dolores de Muro, who inevitably turns out to be the daughter of a friend of his father.

This is all incessantly light hearted, even in scenes of danger. While performing tricks at a club, he accidentally takes the feather off the cap of Don Sebastian of the Queen’s Guard, so makes an enemy. Don Sebastian throws it into the crowd, so he retrieves it, which prompts a swordfight witnessed by Queen Isabella and a visiting cousin, Archduke Paul of Austria and Hungary. And, during the fight, a bull gets free and stampedes through the streets. Don Cesar, saves Don Sebastian in a feat of acrobatics and even catches the bull. Archduke Paul eagerly wants to meet him and the two go out on the town to celebrate.

Fairbanks was riding high in the twenties as the reigning King of Hollywood and it’s easy to see why, because everything he does is utterly effortless. He dances. He fences. He moves like an angel. What impressed me was how he kept on leaping onto or through things, but usually backwards, as if he didn’t even need to look at what he was doing, because his body would do it anyway. He leaps backwards onto a table. He leaps backwards onto a ledge then through a window. He leaps backwards into a carriage.

Then things change at the Archduke’s ball. You see, Don Sebastian has fallen for Dolores too and is eagerly pursuing permission to seek her hand, according to society’s standards. His rival, of course, flouts all those standards and cuts straight to the chase, wooing her with an exotic passion. Nobody notices this, except for Dolores herself and the genial Archduke, who I initially assumed would be a villain but serves as a matchmaker for the young couple.

And, when he realises it, that pisses off Don Sebastian enough that he runs the Archduke through with his sword, cracking a candlestick over Don Cesar’s head and framing him for the crime. The only evidence that he didn’t do it is a note the Archduke writes on a playing card, but that’s stolen by scheming Don Fabrique to use to blackmail Don Sebastian. Don Cesar is to be quickly executed to avoid an international incident, but takes the honourable way out by stabbing himself in the heart and leaping out of the window into the raging torrent below.

And that’s the end of that.

Nah, not really. If you believed that, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. But now Don Cesar is officially dead and quietly looking for a way to clear his name and the tone shifts completely. No longer is it a lark, it’s a deadly game, for money and marriage and justice.

To my thinking, the best part of the film and surely the most fun comes late, as Don Cesar, now pretending to be Don Q for the first and only time in the entire movie, waylays Colonel Matsado, who’s being sent to capture him and takes his place. While there’s still nothing here about helping the poor, this feels like it meets the spirit of The Mark of Zorro.

The worst part of the film, however, is the shoehorning in of Zorro. Don Cesar writes him a letter explaining the situation and therefore his father retrieves his sword from the wall he hurled it into thirty years before, grabs a mask and sails for Spain. He finds everyone else just in time for the final fight and reveals who he is by carving the Z into an enemy’s face.

It’s good old nostalgic fun and a fun way for father and son to be reunited, but there isn’t a valid reason for it to happen otherwise. It’s no hard feat to imagine him cut entirely from the movie without damaging the flow. Arguably, it would improve it. And why is he wearing that mask? Everybody’s known who Zorro is for the past thirty years!

Given that Douglas Fairbanks plays both of these characters, he’s therefore the best and the worst reason to watch Don Q, Son of Zorro. As Don Cesar, he’s highly impressive, always a joy to watch even when he’s bragging or doing something else utterly inappropriate. But, as Zorro, he’s rather superfluous.

Mary Astor is suitably lovely as Dolores but gets as little to do as her father, played with all requisite decorum by Jack McDonald. Director Donald Crisp proves to be an excellent villain as Don Sebastian, never as overtly corrupt as his blackmailer, Don Fabrique, played by Jean Hersholt. Stella DeLanti is there as the Queen, outshone in every scene by Warner Oland, not in yellowface for a change, as Archduke Paul.

From what I recall of The Mark of Zorro, this is a bigger production in every way and it met with the public’s approval. However, it doesn’t have any of that film’s substance and it falls short on stuntwork. As impressive as Douglas Fairbanks is here, he was better there.