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Taking up Boiardo's tale, Ariosto again presents knights and melodrama, theatrical highspots of love and daring deeds, in a stage manner which contained much of the previous century and much of that which was to come.
Ariosto promptly set to work on his out-of-date find, Orlando Amando, and produced, in an atmosphere of legend and dream, a mixture of irony and profound knowledge of human character, all so much alive that it gives us the illusion of reality and so arouses in us that interest which only reality can arouse.
" Orlando ", a tale of marvellous adventures, begins with the presentation of the characters and continues with explanatory stories in the extremely lively groundwork in the principal action, itself a series of rapid sketches.
Douglas Fairbanks is certainly Count Orlando. Who better than Doug' could recreate the prodigious knight ? We have only to think of him in " The Sign of Zorro " and " The Gaucho " when he was defender of a town and the protector of the weak and lowly.
The beautiful Angelica is the fascinating oriental, the apple of discord in Charlemagne's camp, the stirrer-up of human passions, nothing like the cold enchanteress of Boiardo's original. Ariosto makes of her an erring and adventurous woman, as is found generally in old chivalry, but a woman eternally feminine, charming enough to inspire the love of many heroes and throw Orlando into a frenzy when he is deceived. Here is a feminine nature that suits us ; Angelica has no family, one does not known who she is and that is just what is needed in a film.
To what actress could we give this part of Angelica? Amongst the stars of the Cinema I cannot think of one who would exactly fill the bill, classic form, the beauty of an earthly goddess, extremely seductive in motion and rest. Maria Carmi ? Priscilla Dean ? Perhaps, they are neither of them quite what is wanted. Emile Ghione might make a Ferrau with his thin, fierce face or Roy d'Arcy could take that part.
Just as every historical figure has found his approximate self in the features of some cinema actor, so every memorable or legendary event has found its equivalent in film melodrama.
Thomas Ince, the creator of cowboy pictures might well be one of the directors of " Orlando " and he could certainly find physical counterparts for many of the characters. Perhaps he would think of Wallace Beery for Rodomonte. Since Ariosto wrote " Orlando " there has been nothing new
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