The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

1921
Passed
2h 30m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

An extended family split up in France and Germany find themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield during World War I.An extended family split up in France and Germany find themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield during World War I.An extended family split up in France and Germany find themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield during World War I.

Director
- Rex Ingram
Writers
- Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
- June Mathis
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

3.6K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Rex Ingram
Writers
- Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
- June Mathis
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 win

Trivia
Rudolph Valentino signed onto the film for $350 a week, less than Wallace Beery earned for his small role as a German officer. Metro provided Valentino only with his Argentine gaucho costume and his French soldier's uniform. For the Parisian sequence Valentino purchased more than 25 custom-fitted suits from a New York tailor, which he spent the next year paying for.

Goofs
The same shot of a cat clawing at a small poodle while sitting on top of a piano is used two different times.

Quotes
[last lines]
Tchernoff: Peace has come - but the Four Horsemen will still ravage humanity - stirring unrest in the world - until all hatred is dead and only love reigns in the heart of mankind.

Alternate versions
In 1993 Turner Entertainment in association with Britain's Channel Four distributed a full restoration by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's Photoplay Productions. The restoration includes many scenes that had been deleted or thought missing since the film's premiere, including original tinting and a single shot of a brief Prizma Color sequence that had been in the original release. The restored film is accompanied by a new original score composed and conducted by Carl Davis.

Connections
Featured in The Movies March On (1939)

Soundtracks
Apocalypse Theme
(1993)
Music by Carl Davis
Based on the Fantasia Sonata "Après une lecture du Dante" by Franz Liszt (1849)
Performed by Orchestre Symphonique de Radio-Télé Luxembourg (as Symphony Orchestra of Radio-Télé Luxembourg) lead by Philippe Koch
In the score of the 1993 restored version

User reviews54

Review

Featured review

An irreplaceable item of cinema history.

I was fortunate enough to obtain a video of 'Four Horsemen ' recently and having read about it many years ago, I was intrigued to see whether it lived up to the legend. Considering it was made 80 years ago, I was quite astonished at the quality of this film, in terms of acting,direction and photography.To our modern eyes, the 'special effects'may,of course, seem a little quaint, but there is no denying that as an anti-war film, it stands alongside 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and 'Grande Illusion', and it has lost little of its power to move. The development of the character of Julio is a 'tour de force' of acting by Valentino and his celebrated tango in one of the murkier establishments of Buenos Aires realistically conveys the dissolute atmosphere of the cafe society of the period. My copy of the film was the tinted version with a (non-vocal) soundtrack added, which included tango music played by an apparently unsynchronised band ! To keen students of cinematic history, this film is a 'must-see'- indeed,I know of no contemporary films which comes close to matching it.