One of the talking heads in NATAN, the film Paul Duane and I made together, belongs to Lenny Borger, translator/subtitler, scholar and film detective. It was great catching up with him (and many other people) on my recent visit to Paris, and he mentioned a movie he thought I should see. Henri Fescourt’s stunning MONTE CRISTO is thus the subject of this fortnight’s edition of The Forgotten, here, and it’s a film I hope I can help popularise — it deserves to be seen.
Lenny has a kind of personal interest, since his role in rediscovering the long-lost film and restoring it to its full running time in a very nearly pristine form was a crucial one. But his connection to the project hasn’t caused him to overrate the movie’s quality. As the RKO publicity department would say, It’s Terrific!
shadowplay 