text: Most of the silent films I've seen have been serious in nature, so it was fun to see one with a comic touch. The setting and some of the scenes for "The Beloved Rogue" were reminiscent of 1923's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" relative to the Paris street scenes and the celebration of the 'King of Fools'. John Barrymore portrays France's greatest poet Francois Villon in a characterization that ranges quite broadly from virtual slapstick to romantically tender; that 'water into wine' bit early in the picture was rather amusing.<br /><br />It seems that times never change, and it's interesting to see the movie make a cogent observation nearly a century ago - Paris has it's fool to reign for one night, while everywhere else has one all the time. How true.<br /><br />The appearance of Conrad Veidt in the film was a little surprising for this viewer, I've only seen him as Major Strasser in "Casablanca", oddly one of his very last movies. As King Louis XI, he's a monarch obsessed with astrology, crafty but suspicious, and it was a bit unnerving to see how closely he resembled Brad Dourif's Wormtounge character from the final chapter of the 'Lord Of The Rings' trilogy. Not exactly exuding the confidence a King of France might be expected to bear. Which is why the ascendancy of Burgundy's duke (Lawson Butt) seemed all the more plausible, until Villon rises to the occasion to put one over on both rulers.<br /><br />I found it interesting that the use of inter-title cards was exceedingly spare, used only when absolutely necessary to advance the story. Without them though, one would have missed a curious nugget. It seems Villon carried out his exile from Paris at the Hostel of the Lame Flea! <br /><br />The print I viewed was of exceptional quality, the very first film presented in a one hundred Action and Suspense movie DVD set from Mill Creek Entertainment, that's saying something for a film that's now eighty years old. It's great that movies from the silent era are now finding a wider distribution in this type of commercial format, making them accessible to an entirely new generation of movie lovers.<br /><br />One question - did it seem like Conrad Veidt's King Louis picked his nose on purpose, or as an inadvertent gesture that simply remained safe from the cutting room?