The Cavalier (1928) - Richard Talmadge basically parkours through Old Mexico

If you have an hour to kill and you like watching a guy who clearly spent his childhood climbing trees and falling off roofs, The Cavalier is worth a look. It’s not a deep movie. It doesn’t want to be. It’s the kind of film you put on when you want to see someone move with more energy than logic. If you’re looking for a heavy historical drama about the complexities of Mexican history, you are going to be very annoyed by this.

Richard Talmadge is the main reason to watch. He’s playing Tordillo, the masked rider, and he treats every scene like it’s an obstacle course. There’s this one moment early on where he’s getting away from some guards, and he doesn’t just run—he sort of bounces. He scales a wall with this weird, fluid motion that makes you realize why people compared him to Douglas Fairbanks. Actually, in some ways, he’s faster. Less graceful, maybe, but faster. He’s got that stuntman energy where you can almost see him checking the landing zone just off-camera before he leaps.

The plot is about as thin as the mask he wears. He falls for Barbara Bedford, who plays the 'impoverished girl' role. She’s fine, though she spends a lot of the movie looking slightly confused by how much Talmadge is jumping around. Her father, played by David Torrence, is the classic silent movie grump. He doesn’t like the masked guy, he doesn’t like his daughter’s choices, and he spends most of his screen time pointing at things and looking stern. It’s a very standard setup, but it gets the job done.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Cavalier (1928) through its definitive frames.

There’s a scene in a tavern—or maybe it’s a house, the sets all kind of blend together—where the lighting is surprisingly dark. Not 'moody' dark, just 'we might have run out of lamps' dark. You can barely see the expressions on the faces of the extras in the background. They’re just sitting there, nursing drinks, looking like they’re waiting for the director to yell cut so they can go home. It’s one of those moments that reminds you this was a production moving at a certain speed.

The costume for the 'Cavalier' is a bit much. The mask is huge. It covers half his face in a way that makes it look like it’s slipping every time he moves his head too fast. You keep waiting for it to fall off during a fight, but it stays glued on by some 1920s miracle. It’s much less sleek than what you see in something like Arizona Nights, which had a bit more of that polished Western feel. Here, it feels a bit more DIY.

The chase at the end is where the movie finally decides to stop pretending it has a story and just becomes an action reel. The father’s gang is chasing the lovers, and the camera work gets a bit frantic. There are these wide shots of the horses kicking up so much dust that you lose track of who is who. It feels messy, but in a way that feels real. Like, if you were actually chasing someone through a dirt field in 1928, this is exactly what it would look like. It’s not choreographed to perfection; it’s just a bunch of guys on horses going as fast as they can.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Cavalier (1928) through its definitive frames.

I noticed a weird edit during the middle of the chase. One second they are riding through a relatively flat area, and the next, they are suddenly in this rocky terrain with no transition. It’s like the editor just found a cool shot of a cliff and decided it had to go there, continuity be damned. It’s the kind of thing that makes you smile because it’s so earnest in its desire to be exciting.

If you've seen things like The Timber Queen, you know the vibe of these stunt-heavy silents. They aren't trying to change your life. They just want you to go 'wow' when the lead actor does a backflip off a balcony. Talmadge does plenty of that here. He’s got this weirdly charming smile that he flashes right after doing something physically impossible, like he’s in on the joke.

The chemistry between Talmadge and Bedford is... okay. It’s not exactly electric. They have a few scenes where they stare into each other's eyes, but you get the feeling they just met five minutes before the cameras started rolling. Bedford is good at the 'concerned' look, which she has to do a lot because her boyfriend keeps jumping off tall buildings.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But it’s a fun relic. It’s short, it moves fast, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. By the time the final chase ends, you feel like you’ve seen a decent circus act. Sometimes that’s all you really need from a movie. It’s definitely more entertaining than some of the slower stuff from the same year, like Guns of Loos, which takes itself way more seriously but has half the energy.

One last thing: keep an eye on the background extras during the town scenes. Half of them look like they aren't sure if they're in the shot or not. There’s a guy leaning against a post in the background of one of the early scenes who just stares directly at the camera for a solid three seconds. It’s great. It makes the whole thing feel like a real place, or at least a real movie set where everyone was just trying to get through the day.