Apocalypse tomorrow as fest honours Ingram

Tomorrow night in the National Concert Hall, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival honours Dublin's own Hitchcock. Is this too big a claim for Rex Ingram? No – the director of The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, son of a Church of Ireland rector, was, indeed, born Reginald Hitchcock in 1892.

Ingram emigrated to the US in 1911 and fast became one of the most significant directors of silent movies. He worked on the first version of Ben Hur (credited to Fred Niblo) and also directed an early take on The Prisoner of Zenda. Yet he will always be best known for the durably strange, unclassifiable Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The event finds the RTÉ Concert Orchestra accompanying the film with a luminous score by Carl Davis. Legendary film archivist Kevin Brownlow, recent recipient of an honorary Oscar, supervised the restoration of the print.

Ingram's film, first released in 1921, is best remembered for Rudolph Valentino's supernaturally seductive tango. The Italian actor's simmering moves are still recycled by soap stars and retired Tory politicians on Strictly Come Dancing. The latter sections of the film, however, feature an early, miserable meditation on the horrors of the first World War.

Was critic David Thomson fair when, describing Ingram, he said: “His life was also a bold gesture meant to show the hopeless vulgarity of Hollywood”? Decide for yourself. jdiff.com

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